The Holy Spirit in Christian theology

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HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN

‘THEOLOGY by

George 5. Hendry

Philadelphia THE WESTMINSTER PRESS

COPYRIGHT, MCMLVI, BY W. L. JENKINS

All rights reserved — no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission

in writing from the publisher, except by a re-

viewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review in magazine or newspaper,

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Theology Library SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

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Foreword n 1945 the Alumni Association and Board of Trustees of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary established a lectureship, bringing a distinguished scholar each

year to address an annua! midwinter convocation of min-

isters and students on some phase of Christian thought. The Thomas White Currie Bible Class of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church of Dallas, Texas, in 1950, under-

took the maintenance of this lectureship in memory of the

late Dr. Thomas White Currie, founder of the class and president of the seminary from 1921 to 1943.

The series of lectures on this foundation for the year

1955 is included in this volume.

Davi L. Sirrr, President.

Contents Preface I. The Holy Spirit and Christ I. The Holy Spirit and God

1

30

III. The Holy Spirit and the Church

53

IV. The Holy Spirit and the Word

72

V. The Holy Spirit and the Human Spirit

96

Preface he first three chapters of this book were put together

when I was invited to give the C. C. Hein Memorial Lectures at the seminaries of the American Lutheran Chureh in Columbus, Ohio, and Dubuque, Iowa. Before I had time to revise the manuscript, I received an invita-

tion to deliver the Thomas White Currie Lectures at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin,

Texas; and as this call came at relatively short notice, it

seemed to present a suitable opportunity to develop some further aspects of the same theme. The Executive Com-

mittee of the American Lutheran Church readily consented to my incorporating the material I had given them in the largerseries.

* The book does not pretend to offer a systematic doc-

trine of the Holy Spirit. Its purpose is merely to direct

attention to certain doctrinal problems in this area which

have emerged in recent theological thought. I have come more and moreto the view that the real core of many con-

troversial issues is the implied doctrine of the Holy Spirit,

and J havetried in these pages to consider some of them

from this angle.

I wish to express my thanks for the many kindnesses

shown to me at the three institutions at which the Jectures were delivered.

G. S. H.

The Holy Spirit and Christ

[ has becomealmost a convention that those who under-

take to write about the Holy Spirit should begin by de-

ploring the neglect of this doctrine in the thought andlife of the Church today. It may at once be said that this neglect (if it is a fact) is not due to willful indifference; for no

one can read the testimony of the New Testament to the presence and power of the Spirit without wishing that it

might be known in fuller measure in the experience of the

Church in our timeNoris it due to inattention to the doc-

trine of the Holy Spirit on the part of theologians; for

__many studies, historical anddoctrinal, have been devoted to the subject,as the shelves of our theological libraries

bear witness, The real reason is that the doctrine_of the Holy Spirit is beset with difficulties and obscurities, which baffle the mind, and which no book has yet been able to

dispel, The hope has been expressed that someday, some-

one, out of a fuller experience of the Spirit than is known among us, will write a great book about the Spirit, a book that “rings the bell.” * I should hesitate to pronouncethis a vain hope; but if such a book were to be written, it will not be one which answersall the questions and solves all

the problems. Here it is true, as with no other topic in

theology, that we see through a glass darkly. The true doctrine of the Holy Spirit will always be one that recog-

nizes the inherent subtlety and complexity of the subject tl

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

and is most conscious of its inadequacy to grasp the mys-

tery after which it gropes. There are three particular reasons why we should not cherish too sanguine expectations: 1. When wesay “spirit,” we mean life, whatever else we may mean. Vitality is of the essence of spirit. Life is the ultimate mystery, which defies reduction to a formula;

we may point toward it and describe it, but in the endit

must speak for itself. Life begins beyond the point at which our words leave off. If the Holy Spirit means the living action of God in the world (and we can accept this as a provisional definition), our formulations cannot hope to catch up with thereality. David Friedrich Strauss described the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (in one specific aspect) as the Achilles heel of Protestantism. In a sense the description is true. Thisis indeed the vulnerable point, the chink in the armor of our systems, which no argument from first principles can seal

over. But it may be equally well, if less elegantly, de-

scribed as the snorkel, the breathing tube which we reach

out to the vivifying breath of God so as to avoid suffoca-

tion in the systematic shells of our own construction. 2. We have to recognize that the testimony of Holy

Scripture, on which we principally depend, does not form a consistent and homogeneous pattern. We must disabuse

our minds of the prejudice, common among those who

hold Scripture in high esteem, that all its utterances on any

one subject must be consistent with one another and that any real discrepancy would be incongruous with its divine authority. This is a prejudice, because it is without warrant in Scripture itself, which, as the record of a living experience, bears the authentic stamp of a rich diversity. Moreover, the Bible itself is witness that there is no area

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST

13

in which it is more necessary to practice discrimination than that of experience of the Spirit. According to Paul,

one of the gifts of the Spirit is, paradoxically, “ theability to distinguish between spirits” (I Cor. 12:10 R.S.V.).Te ~~

impossible toframea doctrine of the Holy Spirit by tak-

ing all the data indiscriminately and forcing them into the

_ ~Proerusteanbed of a formal system. We have to discrim-

inate between whatis true and whatis false; we have to discriminate between what is primary and whatis second-

ary, between what is central and what is peripheral; we

have to discriminate between testimonies concerning the

Spirit which reflect different levels of apprehension, be-

tween those which belong to different stages of the divine

economy, and between those which haverelation to dif-

ferent moments in the dialectic of spirit. I shall return to this in a moment, when I cometo the question of method. But first I must refer to the third source of our difficulty.

3, The dogmatic tradition of the Church (on which we are dependent, whether we acknowledgeit or not) offers little clarification in this matter. In contrast to the elabo-

rate care and precision which were applied to the definition of the doctrine of the person of Christ, the definition

of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which was madeat the

Council of Constantinople in 381 and which has scarcely been improveduponsince, is singularly meager, and might even be described as slipshod. I shall say more aboutthis

at a later stage, but I may remark at this point that a definition of the Church’s faith regarding the Holy Spirit

that omits explicit reference to the relation between the , Spirit and the incarnate Christ, andto the relation between

the Spirit and the Church, must be held to be gravely defective by the standard of the New Testament. And if the two great divisions in Christendom, that between East

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

and West, and that between Roman Catholicism and

Protestantism, may be traced back to profound differences

in regard to those two questions, the ultimate responsibility belongs to the undivided Church, which spoke so vaguely and so hesitatingly in the fourth century. At all events, the unhappy consequence is that any attempt at greater precision in regard to those questions brings us into controversy with those from whom weare divided. In view of these difficulties it is scarcely necessary for me to add that it is not my intention in these chapters to offer an exhaustive treatment of the doctrine of the Holy

Spirit. It is of a more modest and preliminary character: it is to try to determine what must be the basic pattern of a Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit; and I want to do

this by concentrating on someof the specific problems that

have to be considered within its framework.

There are fiveproblems that specially call for attention. (1) There is the problenithatarises directly out of the New

Testament witness to the Spirit—the problem of the relation between the Spirit and Christ. (2) There is the problem that presented itselftothe mind of the Church

in the fourth century as the sequel to the Christological decisions — the problem of the relation of the Spirit and God, or the Trinitarian problem. (3) There is the problem that has exercised theology more particularly in the West,

since it lies at the root of the great divisions of Western Christendom — the problem of the relation between the Holy Spirit and the Church. (4) Thereis the problem that arises out of the Protestant answer to (8), which hasfigured prominently in our own Reformed tradition — the problem of the relation of the and the Word. (5) Fi-

nally, there is the problem that is suggestéd by certain strains in the Old Testament witness to the Spirit — which

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST

15

has engaged special interest in modern times, though it has been present to the mind of the Church at other times — the problem of the relation between the Holy Spirit and ’

the humanspirit.

It need hardly be said that these problems cannot be sealed off in separate compartments or considered in isolation from one another. It is obvious that one leads into the other and that, in the last analysis, they must be different aspects of one and the same problem. In distinguishing them, as we cannot avoid doing, we shall endeavor to light up the central problem from the perspective of each of them in turn. Weare, however, confronted with a problem of discrimination right at the outset: In what order should we take up these problems? This is more than an academic

question of method; the answer we give will go far to de-

termine the ultimate pattern that emerges. The choiceis

between two orders, which may be described as the

canonical and the chronological, respectively. By the canonical order I mean that which follows the order of canonical Scripture, which takes first those aspects of the

nature and activity of the Spirit which appear in the Old Testament, and regards them as the foundation or frame-

work within which the material offered by the New Testament is to be understood. Strong arguments can be produced in favor of this order. In prefixing the Old Testament to the New in the canon of Christian Scripture, the Church appeared to suggest that in the study of our faith we should begin with Genesis and work our way through

to Revelation. Moreover, if men’s understanding of the Spirit has undergone a progressive development, this

would appear to be the scientific way to elucidate it. This is the order that has been followed in the majority of

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

recent works on the Holy Spirit: the authors have ap-

proachedtheir task by seeking to reach a general conception of the nature and activity of the Spirit, largely with the aid of certain strains in the Old Testament which point to a general presence and operation of the Spirit in creation and the life of man, and then they have endeavored to find within this framework a place for the special em-

phasis of the New Testament on the gift of the Spirit. I do not believe that this is satisfactory. The witness of the New

Testament to the gift of the Spirit is soteriological and eschatological in character; when the attempt is madetofit it into the framework of a conception that is cosmological and anthropological in character, it almost certainly loses something ofits distinctiveness.” The alternative order is the chronological, by which I mean the order in which the problems engaged the attention of the Church. The Church did not begin with a general conception of the Spirit in the context of the relation between God and the world or God and man; itbegan

with an endeavorto. understand the distinctivelyChris-

tian experience of the Spirit as a gift inthecontext ofthe mission and work of Christ, and it was from thisfoundation that the doctrine of the Spirit was built up. But, if we adopt this foundation, howcan wefind a place onit for those more general aspects of the activity of the Spirit

to which the Old Testament bears witness? We seem to be in a dilemma. | I do notbelieve, however, that the difficulty is insoluble.

Tt will be a main part of my thesis in these chapters that if we approach the problems in the chronological order (which is also the order in which I have enumerated | them), it will not only assist our understanding of the structure of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but

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17

it will also provide a perspective from which we may see _ light on the wider aspects of the problem. v/ _-+ The New Testament testimonies to the Spirit may be divided, roughly, into two groups: (1) those of the Synop-

ticsand The Acts, which are concerned principally with

the incidence of the Spirit; and (2) those of the Epistles

and the Fourth Gospel, which are more concerned with

the functions and the natureof theSpirit. There is not, of course, a clear-cut division between the two groups; Loth interests converge, notably in the Fourth Gospel, wher we

have the most fully developed teaching on the work of the Spirit and at the same time the most explicit emphasis on the place of the Spirit in the economy of salvation. _ The incidence of the Spirit is interpreted in the New

Testament as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy,

which had given a place ofcentral importance to the Spirit in the eschatological hope of Israel. In the latter days of Israel’s history, when thevisitation of the Spirit had ceased to be known asa present reality in the life of the people and had become an object of future hope, this hope re-

ceived a definite shape in the prophecy of an outpouring of the Spirit which would be permanent and universal. In + contrast to the heroes, kings, and prophets of the past,

upon whom the Spirit came only as an occasional and temporary visitant, the promised shoot of the stem of Jesse is one upon whom theSpirit of the Lord will remain

(Isa, 11:2). Permanent endowment with the Spiritis also a prominent feature in the portrait of the Servant of the © Lord in Second Isaiah: “Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom

my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall

bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. . . . He shall not fail

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

nor be discouraged;till he have set judgmentin the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law” (Isa. 42:1-4). -

The expectation of the inspired Messianic king or Servant of the Lord leads on to the vision of an outpouring of the Spirit upon the whole people of God and ultimately upon all flesh. The wish expressed by Moses that God would put his Spirit upon all the Lord’s people (Num. 11:29) becomes a recurring feature of the prophetic eschatology. According to Ezekiel (ch. 36:26-28) and his dramatic vision of the valley of dry bones (ch. 37:1-14), the hopeof the Spirit is the essential ground of the renewal of Israel. And the high point is reached in the prophecy of Joel: “ Andit shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the aoaey in those days will I pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28 £,),

According to the New Testament, thefulfillment of both these aspects of the prophetic hope is found in Jesusand

7 his Church. 1. The dual character of the prophetic hope sheds light on a feature of the New Testament that has given rise to

some perplexity: while the Spirit figures prominently in

the life and thought of the Primitive Church, it scarcely appears as a theme in the Synoptic teaching of Jesus. If

the explicit and extensive teaching on the Spirit, which is

ascribed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, has any historical basis, it is certainly difficult to understand why no trace of it should appearin the Synoptics. When we examine the Synoptics on their own account, however, it becomes clear

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that their primary concern is to present Jesus, not merely as a teacherof theSpirit, but as the uniquehearer of the *

Spirit, the one in whom the prophetic hope of a permanent presence of the Spirit is fulfilled. Although virtually absent from the Synoptic teaching of Jesus, the Spirit is mentioned at decisive points in his life and ministry — at his conception, his baptism, his temptation, his first preach-

ing, his casting out of demons, and perhaps also at his

death on the cross. Taken together, these references make

it plain that the intention of the Synoptics is to present the life of Jesus as one wholly possessed and directed by the

Ww

Spirit.

It is impossible for me to go through all these references; but it will suffice if I confine my attention to the reference to the visible descent of the Spirit at the baptism of Jesus, which is reported in similar terms by all three Synoptics, and whichis clearly meant to be regarded as an event of fundamental importancefA careful reading of the three narratives will show that the emphasis is not so much on the descent of the Spirit as on the visible revelation ofit: the Spirit is seen descending upon him like a dove (“in bodily form,” Luke 3:99). In other words,

the. point is not that the Spirit descended upon Jesus at

. that precise moment (having not been upon him before), —

- but that it was then revealed that Jesus is the permanent revelation bearerof the Spirit. (The question to whom was made is not of primary importance.) here is no support in the passage for an adoptionist Christology, which rests upon a misconception of its central motif. Although the phrase, “Thou art my . . . Son,” was used as a formula of adoption, its conflation with the phrase applied to the elect servant in Isa. 42:1 indicates that its source is to be found in the Second Psalm, and that the intention of

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

the voice from heaven is to identify Jesus as the one to

whom these testimonies of Scripture apply, not to suggest

that he was at that momentbeing elected to the Messianic

office. Further, the association of the descent of the Spirit with the baptism of Jesus has a revelatory rather than an adoptionist significance: by the visible descent of the

Spirit upon him at his baptism Jesus is identified as the one whowill dispense the Spirit and inaugurate the distinc-

tively Christian baptism. This is, of course, the interpretation of the whole episode given in the Fourth Gospel

(although the baptism of Jesus is not explicitly recorded there): the visible descent of the Spirit is divinely revealed to John as the sign that Jesus is the permanent bearer and dispenser of the Holy Spirit:

“ And John bore witness, “1 saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me,

“ He on whom yousee the Spirit descend and remain,this is he

who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God’” (John 1:32-34).

D The second element in the prophetic hope, the fulfillment of which is proclaimed in the New Testament,is

the general outpouring oftheSpirit “ uponflesh.” It is the prophecyof Joel which forms the text of Peter’s discourse on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16 ff.). “Thereis a well-known difficulty here. The Fourth Gospel gives an account of the outpouring of the Spirit that conflicts with that of the Pentecost narrative. According to the Johannine account(John 20:22), the gift of the Spirit was

imparted directly from the mouth of the risen Lord to the

assembled disciples (Thomas being absent) on the evening of Easter. Easter and Pentecost are, so to speak,tele-

scoped together. In the Lucan account, on the other hand,

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971

they are separated by a well-defined interval. We need not

concern ourselves with the historical problem raised bythis

discrepancy or with the attempts that have been made to

harmonize the two narratives. There is one point on which, it should be noted, both of them are in agreement: the gift of the Spirit comes at the end — or after the end — of the earthly ministry of Jesus. The point is emphasized in Luke by his twice recording the ascension (Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9) and the Lord’s commandto his disciples to wait (Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4). There is no period of waiting in the Johannine account of the insufflation. Yet the Johannine teaching is even more emphatic that the coming of the Spirit is consequent on the departure of Christ. The point is stated categorically — almost harshly —in the Evangelist’s comment on a somewhat cryptic

utterance of Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles: “ Now this

he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit was not [given], because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). It is re-

iterated with great emphasis in the Paraclete sayings: the

presence of Jesus, which was only temporary, must be

withdrawn,in order that the Spirit may cometo stay forever. The alternation is expressed or implied in all five

sayings, and most explicitly in John 16:7, where Jesusal-

most seems to present his disciples with a choice between his continued presence and the coming of the Paraclete: “ Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage

that I go away,for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will

not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John

16:7). Here, then, is the first thing that must be set down in answerto the question, Whatis the relation between the

Spirit and Christ? The Spirit is after Christ in the divine

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

economy; the earthly ministry of Christ must be completed

before the Spirit comes.

.” This New or sequence commended the problem

Testament emphasis on the economic order appears to lend support to the view which itself to some in the ancient Church, when arose of defining the relations between God,

Christ, and the Spirit. It was the view of the Modalists

thatit is the same personal subject with whom wehave to

do in each case; the difference lies only in the modes in which he has been present and active in the world, first

as Father, secondly as Son, and thirdly as Holy Spirit. It is a plausible view, especially as regards Christ and the

Spirit; and, indeed,it contains an element of truth, for the

presence of the Spirit is truly the continued presenceof Christ in another mode. It is impossible that Christ's promise, “ Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of

the world,”can refer to anything other than his presence in

the Spirit; and there is no evidence that the Early Church

ever thought otherwise. The manner in which Paul de-

scribes the Christian situation indifferently as “ in Christ”

and “in the Spirit ” showsthat he drew no distinction between the presence of the Spirit and the presence of

Christ. And in the Johannine teaching, the Spirit, as “ an-

other Paraclete,” is to be to the disciples what Christ him-

self was to them while he was present with them, and the presence of the Spirit is to be equivalent to the presence of Christ himself, According to one widely accepted view

of John 14:18,andits relation to what precedes, the com-

ing of the Spirit is to be the coming of Christ. This, however, does not mean that the presence of the Spirit, or of Christ in the Spirit, supersedes the historical presence of Christ, in the sense that it renders the earthly ministry of the incarnate Christ of no further significance.

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In so far as it holds or implies that the dispensation of the Spirit supersedes the historical manifestation of God in Christ, modalism strikes at the basis of the Christian faith, which rests on the decisiveness and finality of the incarmation. The work accomplished by Christ in his incarnatelife

remains central, and it cannot be superseded. Thus, al-

though the presenceof the Spirit is equivalent to the pres-

ence of Christ, it is necessary at the same time to observe

the distinction between them. The presence of the Spirit is always secondary to, and consequent upon, the presence

of the incarnate Christ. It is Christ, and not the Spirit, who

became incarnate and wroughtin history the work of God

for the salvation of men. The function of the Spirit is essentially subservient andinstrumental to the work of the in-

carnate Christ. ~ This distinction is a prominent feature in the teachingof

the Fourth Gospel, notably the Paraclete sayings. The Spirit does not come into operation until Christ is glori-_ fied, ie., until he has completed the work of his ministry and returned to the Father. This is because the work of

the Spirit is essentially of a reproductive nature; it has always to do with the work of the incarnate Christ. The Paraclete sayings lay marked stress on the unoriginality of the Spirit’s work: this work, if we may so express it, is simply to hold the spotlight on Christ, to glorify him by taking what is his and showing it to his disciples (John

16:14). The Spirit is to be remembrancer (ch. 14:26), not

innovator. This is not contradicted by the passage in the fifth Paraclete saying, which promises that the Spirit will lead into all the truth (the article must not be disregarded); for the truth, in the idiom of the Fourth Evangelist, is the truth that came by Jesus Christ (ch. 1:17), the truth which was given to him in its fullness by the

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Father (ch. 16:15), and of which he said, “Iam . . . the truth” (ch. 14:6). It will be theoffice of the Spirit to declare this truth, not because he originates it, but because he hears it, and only as such is he the Spirit of truth (ch. 16:13). In a word,it is the function of the Spirit, according to the Johannine teaching, to re-present the truth that is in Christ. t-/ In the Pauline writings the relation between the Spirit and Christ appears in much the same dialectical pattern

of identity and distinction. Christ and the Spirit are so closely associated in the life of Christians that their names are interchangeable. The Christian standing, as.we already

noted, can be described equally well as “ in Christ ” (Rom. 8:1) and “in the Spirit” (Phil. 2:1). In Gal. 3:1, 2 Paul puts the receiving of the Spirit on a par with the decisive

encounter with Jesus Christ which initiates the Christian life, and in Rom. 8:9 he states that the possession of the

Spirit is the conditio sine qua non of being a Christian. From the point of view of Christian experience there was evidently no distinction for him between the presenceof

Christ and the presence of the Spirit. Yet it would bea

mistake to conclude that Pau! identified the Spirit with the exalted Christ, despite what appears to be a categorical affirmation of their identity in II Cor, 3.17, “Now the

Lord is the Spirit”; for “the Lord” here refers to “the Lord”of the preceding sentence, which is clearly an echo

of Ex. 34:34, and the “is” is exegetical (est = significat,

as in Eph. 4:9).° The meaning is that, as turning to the Lord is shown by Scripture to have been the condition for the removing of the veil from the face of Moses, so it will be for those who read “ Moses” today; only, the Lord to whom they must turn is not to be sought on MountSinai, but in his presence in the Spirit. The thought is ofa“dy-

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95

namic identity”; * the Lord “is” the Spirit in the sense

that he is present and active in the Spirit among men.It should also be noted that in the second half of the same

sentence Paul refers to the Spirit of the Lord, and this is the mode of language which he commonly employs to designate the Spirit in relation to Christ, e.g., the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 4:6: Phil. 1:19), the Spirit of his

[God's] Son (Gal. 4:6). The use of the preposition“ of ”

clearly points to a close relationship between the Spirit and

Christ, and equally clearly it points to a distinction between them. Whatis the nature of this distinction? In the Fourth Gospel, as noted, the chief emphasis is laid on the temporal sequence: the Spirit is subsequent to Christ. Paul nowhere stresses this point, perhaps because it had become self-evident; his thought is rather of adistinction between the respective spheres of operation of Christ and the Spirit, which may be described as the objective and

the subjective respectively; the Spirit is the subjective complement or counterpart of the objective fact of Christ,

and it is the function of the Spirit to bring about an inner

| experience of the outward fact in the hearts of men. ~~ This does not mean that the objective fact is dissolved into a subjective experience; there remains a polarity between them {the importance of which weshall see in another context). The fact of Christ is primarily a fact of history, and as such it is reported (Gal. 8:1) and attested (I Cor. 1:1, 2) in the apostolic preaching. The hearing of this report is the indispensable condition of faith (Rom. 10:17). Faith, however, comes only when the outward fact penetrates to the inner heart of man and takes possession of him there — and this is the work of the Spirit. “ No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit ” (I Cor. 12:3). This is the reason for Paul’s insistence that the

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communication of Christ does not depend on human eloquence or wisdom, but on “the demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (ch. 2:14). The human means

might, at best, effect a knowledge of Christ as a historical

figure (perhapsthis is what Paul meant when he spoke of knowing Christ “after the flesh ” or “from a human point of view,” II Cor. 5:16); only the Spirit can open the door to a real, inner apprehension of the Lordship of Christ.

The difference between Johannine and the Pauline conceptions may be described as a difference of perspec-

tive. The authorof the Fourth Gospel, assuming the stand-

point of a contemporary of the incarnation, presents the relation of the Spirit to Christ chiefly in terms of continuation; Paul, from the standpoint of a later time, presents

the experience of the Spirit, which is known to him andhis

contemporaries, as the complementto the fact of Christ. These two emphases, it is clear, are themselves complementary: the Spirit continues the presence of Christ beyondthe brief span of his historical appearance and completes it by effecting its inward apprehension among men. In both emphases, however, the Spirit is presented in a purely Christocentric reference. There is no reference in

the New Testament to any work of the Spirit apart from

Christ. The Spirit is, in an exclusive sense, the Spirit of Christ. This is the central feature in the New Testament witness

to the Spirit. In itself it is perfectly clear and intelligible;

but when we begin toreflect onit, it presents certain diffi-

culties, The first is this: If the Holy Spirit is in an exclu-

sive sense the Spirit of Christ, does this mean that the

New Testament recognizes no presence or activity of the Spirit in the world priorto the historical advent of Christ? That would seem to follow from the insistence of the New

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST

oT

Testament on the novelty of the Spirit. Yet, while the coming of the Spirit is undoubtedly hailed as a novel feature of the eschatological era that has dawned with the

coming of Christ, it is evident that the novelty is to be

understood to pertain, not to the coming of the Spirit as

such (unless it be in relation to the long interval which

had elapsed since the Spirit, as was commonly believed,

had departed from Israel with the extinction of the prophetic line), but rather to the novel features of the Pentecostal outpouring, its permanence and universality. Still, this does not meet the real difficulty: If the work of the Spirit is related exclusively to the historical work of the incarnate Christ in the New Testament, howis it possible to speak of an activity of the Spirit before the advent of Christ? Clearly, it is possible only if that activity is related to the advent of Christ prophetically or proleptically. And this, we find, is precisely the position. All the New Testament references to the activity of the Spirit prior to the incarnation have to do with words of Old Testament Scripture, which are interpreted as prophetic of the historical advent, I have said “words of Old Testament Scripture ” rather

than simply “the Old Testament,” because when we have regard to the actual use of the Old Testament by the

writers of the New, this mode of expression seems more

accurate. It is often said that the New Testament writers

assume the “inspiration” of the Old Testament as a whole,® and while it is true that there are some passages and phrases that point in this direction, it is gratuitous to

assume that this view is present in every instance. There is no subject on which people are more prone to harbor preconceived ideas than inspiration; it is of the highest im-

portance, therefore, that we should look at the New Testa-

28

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

ment teaching carefully and without prejudice.

There is one strong argumentfor the popular view that

the New Testament writers accept the inspiration of the

Old Testament as a whole: It is that this was an accepted

belief in contemporary Jewry, and the New Testament

writers, being themselves Jews, may be presumed to have

shared it. But those who put forward this argument overlook the fact that there was a strong reason why the New

Testament writers should becritical of Jewish belief precisely in this particular: It is that orthodox Jewry,takingits stand on the Old Testament as the inspired word of God, had rejected Christ. The crux of the matter for the first Christian generation, confronted with unbelieving Judaism, was the interpretation of the Old Testament. In other words, they were concerned, not so much with how the Old Testament was written, as with how it was read, and it was in the reading of the Old Testament, which found in it testimony to Christ, that they saw especially the work of the Holy Spirit. This is made very plain in II Cor., ch. 3, where Paul comes closest to a formal treatment of the problem: The Old Testament becomes a dispensation of condemnation and death to those whoreadit in the synagogue, not becauseit is devoid of splendor, but because its splendor is concealed from them bythe veil which is over their minds; it is the Spirit that removes the veil and dis-

closes the splendor of the Old Testament, which is none

other than the splendor of the Lord.

It is also important to note that in their actual use of the Old Testament the New Testament writers are highly

selective; and while we have in two late passages what appear to be blanket affirmations of the inspiration of the

Old Testament, most of the writers of the New Testament

do not ascribe inspiration except to certain passages or

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST

29

strains in the Old Testament which bear prophetictesti-

mony to Christ.’ According to the Fourth Gospel, it is the searched Scriptures that testify of Christ (John 5:39), and in the Lucan account of the walk to Emmaus, it is the things in all the Scriptures concerning himself which the

risen Christ interprets to the two disciples (Luke 24:25). The inspiration of these passages is not something apart from their testimonial significance, but in fact coincides with it. The Spirit of prophecyis identified with the Spirit of Christ and correlated with the Spirit of the apostolic.

kerygma in I Peter 1:10~-12. Thus theaction oftheSpirit _ is literally Christocentric, inasmuch as it is always cen- _ tered on Christ, whether it come from before or after the-

incarnation. There is a difference of distribution and de--

gree, but none of focus. The New Testament knows no —

workof the Spirit except in relation to the historical manifestation of Christ. |

It remains only to mention one other aspect of this ex-

clusiveness: The New Testament contains no trace of the

conception of the Spirit as the principle that animates the

life of man as God’s creature. Paul does recognize a human spirit, but he does not posit any ontological relation be-

tween it and the Spirit of God; the Spirit of God is always a gift that comes from God andtestifies to the human~ spirit of the salvation that God has wrought in Christ. 3. *

It The Holy Spirit and God LI; the New Testamentthe Spirit is in a pre-eminent sense

the Spirit of Christ; the mission of the Spirit is consequent upon the incarnation, and all the functions of the

Spirit are instrumental to the historical work of Christ. But as Christ is the revelation of God in history, the Spirit must also stand in some relation to God.It is significant that Paul calls the Spirit the Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit much more often than the Spirit of Christ. The ques-

tion must now be asked, Whatare the mutualrelations be-

tween the Spirit, Christ, and God?

_ It is now generally acknowledged that the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the New Testament. At the same time, it is more commonly recognized than it has

sometimes been, that the New Testament contains the

materials out of which the doctrine of the Trinity took shape; and these are to be found, not so much in the texts in which the namesof the three “ persons ” occur together (although the number of these is not insignificant), as rather in the outlines of a Trinitarian pattern which can be

discerned, especially in the thoughtof Paul and the Fourth Evangelist.

I

In the Fourth Gospel, the introduction of the Spirit as “another Paraclete” (John 14:16) points to a parallel

between the Spirit and the Son, which is developed with 30

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

Sl

reference to their respectivemissions: As the Son was sent by the Father (v. 24 and often), came forth from the Father (ch. 16:28), so the Spirit is given by the Father (ch, 14:16), sent by the Father (v. 26), and proceeds from the Father (ch. 15:26), Always, however, the mission of

the Spirit is in some way mediated through the Son: The Father sends the Spirit in response to the prayer of the Son (ch. 14:16), and in his name (v. 26), or the Son sends: the Spirit from the Father (chs. 15:26, 16:7). The Spirit continues and extends the mission of the Son (chs. 14:26, 15:26, 16:18 £.}, and as such works in that field which is common to the Father and the Son (ch. 16:15). Thereis thus a functional or dynamic identity between the Spirit and the Son, and, ultimately, the Father; The Father is: present and active in the Son, who in turn continues to be présent and active in the Spirit. It is in this sense that we must understand the saying of Jesus to the woman of Samaria, “ God is spirit ” (ch. 4:24). Since this saying wasuttered in reply to the woman’s question about the right place to worship, it has commonly been taken to mean that God, being Spirit, is present everywhere and can be worshiped anywhere; the important thing is not where men worship, but how they worship. This interpretation involves the assumption that the implied contrast to spirit is matter, or body (whichis localized). But the Johannine contrast to spirit, like the Pauline, is flesh (cf. ch. 3:6); and flesh connotes everything that belongs to the human realm, everything that is possible or accessible to man. “God is spirit,” then, so far from meaning that God is present and accessible everywhere, means the precise opposite; it means that Godis present in his own realm, to which man as such has no access. To worship Godin spirit is not a possibility thatis

32,

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THECLOGY

always and everywhere open to man, in virtue of a supposed affinity of ‘spirit between man and God which is independent of locality; for this precisely there is not — man is flesh and God is Spirit. But this is just the gospel of Christ, that this possibility has now been opened to men; God has made himself accessible.ta them; the Word has become flesh; the truth has come by Jesus Christ: “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true

worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,for

such the Father seeks to worship him” (ch, 4:23). The point, then, is not that locality has ceased to have any relevance to worship; still less is it implied that locality

never had any relevanceto it, for Jesus declares categorically, “ Salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22). The meaning is that the location has been redefined, and God is now to be worshipedin the place where heis present, i.e., in Him who is the truth incarnate, and who dramatically an-

nounces to the woman, “I who speak to you am he” (v. 26). God actively seeks men to worship him in spirit

and truth by making himself accessible to them in his Son, whois the truth incarnate, and by the mission of the Spirit,

whois the Spirit of the truth. The worship of God in spirit

and truth, is therefore, Trinitarian worship: it is to worship God through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.*

The same Trinitarian pattern appears, somewhat more

distinctly, in the thought of Paul. God is the ultimate source of the Spirit, as he is the sender of the Son, with whom the Spirit is so closely associated: “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal. 4:6). Paul, however, has a more definite conception of the nature and function of the Spirit in the context of his theology of revelation. He interprets the Spirit of God,.on the analogy of the humanspirit, as God’s knowledge of himself:

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND COD

83

“ For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:10£.). Paul does not develop this conception further; for his interest is not in the fact that God knows himself, but in the

fact that he shares that knowledge with others, by giving them his Spirit. The dominant thought is always of the Spirit as going out from God to others — as in the passage immediately following: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that

we might know . . .” (I Cor. 2:13). TheSpirit, which is from God, or “ proceeds ” from God, makes God known to us, because the Spirit is God’s knowledge of Himself, and we can know God only as he shares his self-knowledge with us. But God does not make himself known to us by the immediate impartation of his

Spirit; the gift of the Spirit is inseparably bound up with the mediation of Christ. It is when weconsider the respec-

tive roles of Christ and the Spirit in the self-revelation of God that the Trinitarian structure of the Pauline theology comes most clearly in sight. The gospel, as Paul proclaimsit, is centered in Christ; his theme is Christ crucified

(I Cor., chs. 1; 2), The message of Christ crucified is gospel, because this is an event in which God was at work: “God

wasin Christ reconciling the world unto himself ” (II Cor. 5:19). Christ is the personal revelation of God; the love of Godis personally expressed in him (Rom.5:8; 8:39); the glory of God is present in his face (II Cor. 4:6). Paul consistently distinguishes between God and Christ, and he never ascribes to God the historical actions and experiences of which Christ was the subject. But since those ac-

tions and experiences derive their evangelical significance

34

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

from the fact that God was the ultimate author of them,

Christ may be described as the self-expression or selfobjectification of God in history. The realization of God’s saving purpose with men, however, requires that they should recognize and respond to his expression of himself in Christ, and that, as Paul saw, is humanly impossible. For in becoming incarnate Christ divested himself of the form of God and was found in human form (Phil. 2:5-8). The incarnation meant the assumption of an incognito, as Kierkegaard expressed it; Christ appeared as a man among men, a figure of history,

and, of course, he could be known as such, whether by

personal acquaintance or by report. But so to know him was to know him “after the flesh”; it was to know him

only as “the princes of this world” knew him;for if they had truly known him, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory ” (I Cor. 2:8). To know Christ truly, ie., to know Godin Christ, it is necessary to see him, so to speak,

from God's point of view; and this is precisely the office of the Spirit, as Paul understandsit. The Spirit constitutes the subjective condition which is necessary for the apprehension and recognition of the objective self-manifestation of God in Christ; for the Spirit is God knowing himself,

and to receive the Spirit is to participate in that knowl| edge. The work of God in the gospel has for Paul a dual aspect: there is the (objective) fact of Christ, in whom God confronted men, and there is the (subjective) gift of the Spirit, by which men recognize and respondto the gift of God in Christ. Both are essential. “ The knowledge of the glory of God” which shines “in the face of Christ” becomes luminous to us only when Godkindles a corresponding light within our hearts (II Cor. 4:6). The love of God

THE HOLY SPIRIT ANDGOD

35

is objectively demonstrated and extended to us in Christ: “ God showshis love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). But the subjective experience of — or reaction to — this proffered love is the work of the Spirit: “ The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Our adoption as sons of God, effected objectively in the mission and work of Christ, is consummated when God sends “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4:4-6). The much discussed order of clauses in the apostolic benediction becomes intelligible when it is viewed in this light. The prime fact of the gospel is the objective mission of Christ and his giving of himself for us: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” This fact, however, has a transcendent content and significance; for God was in Christ:

“The love of God.” And the gift of the love of God, which

is expressed in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, is received and realized by participation in the gift of the Spirit: “The communion of the Holy Spirit.” The same order appears in another passage: “But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you,

brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through consecration by the Spirit

and belief in the truth ” (II Thess. 2:13).

The love of the Lord (ie., Jesus Christ) is the objective reality with which we are confronted; it has its transcendent ground in the divine election, andit elicits recognition and response in us by the Spirit. The paradoxical combination of unity and diversity in which God, Christ, and the Spirit appear in the theology

of Paul clearly indicates its Trinitarian character. The

36

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

unity is primarily of a functional nature: “The Spirit is

and gives nothing other than what Christ is and gives and what God is and gives.” ? The distinction between them relates to their respective spheres of activity. Godis the ultimate source and author of the whole movement: “ All

this is from God ” (IE Cor. 5:18). God’s love and salvation

is given objective expression in the world in Jesus Christ,

“whom God put forward . . . to show his righteousness ”

(Rom. 3:25). The subjective recognition and acceptance

and response to the divine advance is the work of the Holy

Spirit in our hearts. But the essential unity of the whole

movement is such that the names of the three “ persons”

are interchangeable; for since God was in Christ, every relation to Christ is at the same time a relation to God;

‘and since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and of Christ,

' the presence of the Spirit in us is equivalent to the pres-

' ence of God (Eph. 2:21) and of Christ (Rom. 8:9 f.). And the gifts of the Spirit are at the same time the ministrations of Christ and the operations of God:

“ Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And

there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord.

And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God

which worketh all in all” (I Cor. 12:4-6).

Il It is a common reproach that when the Christian Church came to formulate its faith in the era of the great councils,

it introduced subtleties and complexities that go beyond anything to be found in the New Testament. The main

occasion of this reproach is, of course, the Chalcedonian definition concerning the person of Christ. The Church's

defense in this matter has always been that it was only by

these careful elaborations that it was able to guard the

37

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

essential elements of the New Testament faith against

perversion by heretics. This reproach, if it is a reproach,

can certainly not be leveled at what the Church hadto say

about the Holy Spirit. Rather the contrary. If the Church

went considerably beyond the New Testament in defining the doctrine of the Person of Christ, it fell considerably

short of the New Testament in defining the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This deficiency deserves special attention, for it was to have fateful consequences.

Church's faith in the Holy Spirit was defined at the

Second General Council at Constantinople in 881.° The

Creed of Nicaea, where the First General Council was held in 325, had been content with a bare mention of the

Holy Spirit. But when Arian sympathizers, in retreat from

the Nicene decision on the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, transferred their attack to the Spirit, it be- _ came necessary for the Church to define its position on this question more explicitly. The bald statement of the

Church’s faith, promulgated at Nicaea, was expanded to read:

“ And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Lifegiver,

who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshiped and together glorified,

who spoke by the prophets.” 4

As a formulation of the Christian faith concerning the

Holy Spirit, this statement is patently defective, both by the standard of the New Testament and in comparison with the second article of the Creed in which it is in-

_ corporated. In view of the close affinity between the Arians

and the Pneumatomachians, who have been called the

Arians of the Spirit, it might have been expected that the —

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

38

article of the Creed which was directed against the latter

would follow closely the pattern of that directed against the former. But there is no more striking feature of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed than the profound dif-

ference in style and tone between the second and third articles. Three things are noticeable—and puzzling — about the third article:

1. The divinity of the Holy Spirit is strongly — but only indirectly — suggested; it is not explicitly affirmed. Various explanations have been offered for this — the widespread dislike of the term homoousios, which was used at Nicaea,

the conciliatory purpose of the emperor in summoning the

Council, perhaps even some uncertainty on the matter in the minds of several of the orthodox Fathers.® Still, the reticence of the Creed here remains puzzling, when com-

pared with the bold and emphatic declarations of the second article (“ true God from true God . .”). 2. The most glaring — and fateful — defect of the Creed is the absence of any statement concerning the relation of

the Holy Spirit to Christ. And this is accentuated by the

third thing:

3. The sole reference to the work of the Spirit concerns the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets. Doubtless

this was intended as an indirect affirmation of the preexistence of the Spirit; but it tends to throw intorelief the absence of any reference to the distinctively New Testament work of the Spirit.

For these reasons it was scarcely to be hoped that the

Creed of Constantinople, although “it is the only one for which ecumenicity, or universal acceptance, can be plausibly claimed . . . one of the few threads by which the tattered fragments of the divided robe of Christendom are

held together,”* would fully satisfy the mind of the

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

89

Church concerning its faith in the Holy Spirit. Its deficiencies sowed seeds of discontent, which were to ripen

in tragic controversy. The mostserious deficiency, as has been noted, concerns the relation of the Spirit to Christ. There is, indeed, a parallelism between Christ and the Spirit, which is seen

in their common derivation from the Father and their

association together with the Father as objects of Chris-

tian worship and devotion. But of the Christocentric character of the mission and work of the Spirit, which is so

strongly emphasized in the New Testament, there is not a

hint. The basic relationship of the Spirit is definedas “ procession from the Father.” This, of course, has a firm Scrip-

tural warrant; it is taken literally (with only a change of the preposition) from John 15:26. But why should this point have been singled out for mention? Why was no

mention made of the part played by Christ in the gift of

the Spirit, a part to which reference is frequently made in

the Paraclete sayings, and indeed in the selfsame verse fet speaks of the procession from the Father: “But when the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from

the Father, he will bear witness to me” (v. 26).

The omission is strange in a Christian creed; and what makes it stranger is that there is no evidence of any intention to exclude the participation of Christ. On the con-

trary, the writings of the Fathers both before and after

Constantinople abound in passages where reference is made to both the Father and the Son in connection with the procession of the Spirit. Sometimes the phrase is,

“From the Father and the Son”; sometimes, “From the Father through the Son ”; the latter, adopted by John of

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

40

Damascus, became the standard formula in the Eastern Church. The Western Church, however, was not content with a tacit understanding of the participation of the Son

in the gift of the Spirit; it took the bold step of altering the Creed by inserting the phrase, “ And from the Son” (filioque) after the words, “Who proceeds from the Father.” *

This Western interpolation was one of the chief factors

that precipitated the fina! breach between the Eastern and Western Churches which took place in 1054 and remains unhealed to this day. It was the subject of protracted and

acrimonious debates which went on for many centuries

both before and after the breach, and which failed to lead to agreement."

It is hard to understand how so fine a point of Trinitarian theology as the doctrine of the “ double procession ”

should have aroused such feeling as it did at the time of the schism, andit is probable that the ostensible meaning

of the filiogue concealed another which related it more

intimately to the actualities of Christian faith and experi-

ence. It is significant that the interpolation was (in all probability) first made in the liturgical use of the Creed;

it was not the product of theological deliberation — indeed, the responsible theological organ of the Church resisted the interpolation for centuries. Here lex orandi was lex credendi, Thefilioque was a fruit of Christian devotion, and if its persistence and eventual triumph bear witness to the strength of the root from whichit sprang,it is hardly conceivable that that roct was enthusiasm for the doctrine of the double procession, an abstruse theologoumenon which is not likely to have been intelligible even to the

average ecclesiastic. It seems much more probable that it was a general sense of the inadequacy of the Creed to ex-

Al

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

press the distinctively Christian apprehension of the Holy

_ Spirit as the Spirit of Christ.

n the experience of the Church the presence of the Holy Spirit was known, not as an alternative to, but as a modeof, the presenceof the living Christ which forms the

constitutive fact of Christian faith—a fact that is en-

shrined in the primitive Christian confession, “ Jesus Christ

is Lord.” The presence of the Spirit does not supersede the

presence of Christ: that is the spiritualist heresy which has plagued the Church repeatedly from the time of Montanus onward. Thefaith of the Christian Church is always

centered in Christ, in whom God wasreconciling the world

unto himself, and its evangelical assurance rests in the finality of his work, accomplished once for all in history, and effectually re-presented through the Spirit. In other

words, the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit has as

its specific content the encounter with the living Christ in the power of his finished work. The Christian Church has from the first been exposed to the danger of an undefined,

unregulated, and, in the final count, unevangelical spirit-

uality. Warnings against it are given in the New Testament, which defines the test of authentic Christian spirituality as confession of the incarnate and risen Christ (I John 4:1-8; I Cor. 12:3).

|

While the association of the Spirit with Christ prevents

the dissolution of Christian faith into a generalreligiosity,

it also conserves its essentially personal character. Despite the spirituality of Christian faith, there is no place in it for mysticism — at least not for mysticism of the classical type, in which the frontiers of personal distinctness are blurred. Christian experience consists in encounter with a personal Lord, and as such it has an indelibly personal character. (It involves a personal responsibility and therefore an

49,

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

ethic. Mysticism has no ethics, but only a technique for acquiring the mystical experience.) That is why the personality of the Spirit is important for faith; as Kahler has

pointed out,’ this is not because faith is concerned to affirm that the Spirit is a person in relation to God, but because

it is concernedtoaffirm that the Spirit is a person in rela-

tion to us, i.e., that the Spirit is not merely a divine influence or force, but that in the Spirit God meets us and deals with us personally. Without the personal work of the

Spirit we could have Christ only as an impersonal memory.

It is the living person of God, present in his Spirit, that unites us with Christ and through him deals personally

with us.

If this is the real meaning of the filiogue, how is it related to its ostensible meaning? Does the distinctively Christian apprehension of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ necessarily involve the doctrine of the double procession? Thecase for the filiogue has been presented powertully in contemporary theology by Karl Barth, and an examination of his main arguments may serve to point up some of the difficulties involved.”

Barth defends the filioque with the following arguments: es ' 1) He holds it to be the fundamental rule of Trinitarian

theology, which is for him the ground of revelation, that “pronouncements on thereality of the divine modes of existence ‘ antecedently in themselves’ cannot be different in content from those that have to be made about their reality in revelation.” " As it is more summarily expressed. by Welch, “ we must make the doctrine of immanent Trinity conform exactly in coritent to the economic Trinity.” +? So, if the Spirit who operates externally upon us is. the

THE HOLY SPIRIT ANDGOD

43

Spirit of the Father and the Son, he can be no other than the Spirit of the Father and the Son in the internal relations of the immanent Trinity. If the procession of the Spirit is from the Father alone (as Photius insisted the Creed should be interpreted —the so-called “monopatrist ” position), we have then a discordance between the relation of the Spirit to the Son in the economyof revelation and that which subsists in the innerlife of the Trinity,

between Godas heis in himself and Godashe is revealed tous‘fi

“2> Barth interprets the Holy Spirit, on the Augustinian

pattern, as the lovethatconstitutes the essence ofthe com-

munionbetweenthe Father and the Son,andhe contends that this communion in the inner, divinelife of the Trinity forms the ground of the communion between God and man, which is established in revelation through the Holy Spirit. Did this communion in the inner life of the Trinity not exist antecedently — and there would be no room for it if the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone — the communion of the Spirit between God and man would lack objective content and ground. 8. Barth fears, conversely, lest the denial of the filioque in respect of the immanent Trinity might open the door to

a corresponding interpretation of revelation, according to

which the Holy Spirit would be understood in a one-sided manneras the Spirit of the Father, having a mission in the

world separate and distinct from the mission of the Son. Barth is emphatic that the God to whose fellowship we

are admitted by the Holy Spirit is none other than the God

and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God whohas re-

vealed himself in his saving work; in other words, our only

access to God is on the basis of the reconciliation wrought

in Christ. The consequence of denying the filioque, Barth

44

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

fears, would be that Christ is bypassed and therelation between God and manis viewed primarily in the Creatorcreature aspect and assumes a naturalistic and unethical character. Welch puts it this way: “We must say certainly that God’s being Holy Spirit de-

pends upon his being Son as well as Father. For the Christian

experience of the Holy Spirit, while now independent of

Christ’s physical presence, is not independent of his having lived in the flesh. And the test of the presence of the Holy

Spirit, as distinguished from other spirits, lies in the fact that this Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, gives the mind of Christ, works

through love, and testifies to Christ. Otherwise the conception of the Holy Spirit degenerates into only a vague notion of

divine immanentism or spiritism.” ¥ Letus look at these arguments moreclosely. The first dependsfor its force on Barth’s contention that the doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in the fact of revelation. I cannot go into this here.** But grantedit is true, granted the validity of the rule Barth derives from it, viz., that there must be a correspondence between the internal] relations of the per-

sons of the Trinity and those which are manifested in their external operations, must this correspondence be exact in

every detail? Barth’s contention really delivers a powerful

weapon into hands of those who argue that defenders of

the double procession of the Spirit ought in consistency to

maintain the double generation of the Son; for since the

Creed explicitly mentions the office of the Holy Spirit in connection with the external mission of the Son (“was incarnate from the Holy Spirit”), there would seem to be

even stronger ground for the interpolation of a Spirituque

in the clause which speaks of his eternal generation, “ begotten of his Father before all worlds.” Yet Barth follows

the tradition of Western theology in strenuously resisting

this inference.

The second argument, viz., that the communion be-

45

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

tween the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit forms the inner-Trinitarian ground of the communion between God and man which is established by the external mission of

the Spirit, is again bound up with Barth’s conception ofthe

groundof the Trinity. Butit confronts us in a more special

way with the question, What is the Holy Spirit? Barth follows the Augustinian view of the Spirit as the love (vincu-

lum caritatis) that unites the Father and the Son in the unity of the Trinity. But there are two difficulties about — this view: (1) It has always been difficult to see how the

bond that unites two hypostases in the Godhead canitself

be a distinct hypostasis like the other two. Do the arguments of Augustine have any stronger basis than the fact that “love,” grammatically considered, can be both verb

and substantive? (2) Augustine was led to his view of the Holy Spirit, implausible as it is in itself, by his determination to carry the trinity, or threeness, into the innermost being of the Godhead and notto derive it from an ultimate

unity, as was the tendency of Eastern theology. But if trinity is no less ultimate than unity in God, andif this is to signified by the Holy Spirit, it would seem more natural

of God identify the Spirit with the substance or ousia stine rather than with one of the three hypostases. Augu

himself practically admits this when he says:

y can be “The persons are not the Trinity, but the Trinit d Spirit Holy Spirit, becauseall three are God an

called also the and Holy.” *

laration that He had in mind, of course, the Biblical dec

majority God is Spirit (John 4:24), which, like the great

definition of of interpreters, he understood as a formal

sment as rr ba em ar uli pec a ts sen pre it d, too ers und So Cod.

in the same rit Spi is d Go if for gy; olo the an ari nit to Tri

ult to up-

sense as the Holy Spirit is Spirit, it becomes diffic

46

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

hold the coequality of the three hypostases; Spirit is more than hypostasis; it is ousia as well. Spirit would seem thus

to have ontological priority over the Father and the Son,

a position which would entail a relative “subordinationism ” of the Father and the Son. It is the economic counterpart of the same ontological

difficulty which is raised by Barth’s third argument, viz.,

that the denial of the filioque opens the way to a relation

between God and men whichis independent of Christ, as

if the mission of the Son and that of the Spirit were two

separate and distinct movements forth from God to men. The point has been expressed by Welch in these words:

“ Whenthe Christian speaks of the Holy Spirit, he does not

refer to just any spirit or spirituality, certainly not to the spirit of man, or merely to a general immanence of God, but to a Holy Spirit consequent upon the event of objective revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ the Son.”1

This is fully in accord with the teaching of the New Testa-

ment, which, as we saw, relates the mission of the Spirit

exclusively to the historical revelation and work of Christ.

But if we insist on the Christocentric reference of the Spirit, what, then, are we to make of those passages in the Old Testament which speak of an activity of the Spirit in creation and in thelife of man? The New Testamentis as

emphatic as could be on the novelty of the gift of the Spirit and the soteriological-eschatological character of the work of the Spirit. It is difficult to see how this can be

combined with the conception of a general presence of the Spirit in a cosmolo gical-anthropological reference. The dif-

ficulty is a crucial one for Trinitarian theology. Attempts have been made to meet it in various ways." One is by means of the conception that in those two

spheres we have to do with two Spirits which are distinct

THE HOLY SPIRIT ANDGOD

AT

from each other, while both proceeding from God. Such appears to be the view of Nels Ferré, who makesa distinction between the Spirit of God and HolySpirit. “The Spirit of God operates on the subagapaic level . . . working towards intensification of personal being through the drives of Eros. . . . Over against the Spirit of God, and particularly beyond it and ahead of it, the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit who is Agape, operates within the understanding and acceptance of the kind of concerned community which is directly rooted in God’s love.” **

Dr. Ferré is careful to add — by way of correcting an over-

sharp distinction between the two Spirits, which he drew

in an earlier book — “ These distinctions are functionally - necessary, but are not metaphysical subdivisions of the Holy Spirit in himself.” It is not easy to see, however, on what ground he can maintain the metaphysical unity of the Holy Spirit, since he expressly excludes the one ground

on which it might be based, viz., the Christological. Re-

garding the person of Christ, Dr. Ferré writes:

“THis two natures were the nature under the supervision of

the Spirit of God and the nature under the direction of the Holy Spirit.” **

If Dr. Ferré holds the orthodox doctrine of the continuing distinctness of the two natures of Christ, the consequence would bethat the Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit must remain forever distinct. A somewhat similar distinction appears to be made by

the Tillich, so far as can be gathered from the references to

Trinity in the first volume of his Systematic Theology. His treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity is reserved for the

discussed second volume, since he holds that it “can be

only after the Christological dogma has been elaborated.” n docHowever, Tillich distinguishes between the Christia

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

trine of the Trinity (which is “a corroboration of the Christological dogma”) and whathecalls “the Trinitarian principles ”; these, he says, are the presuppositions of

the Christian doctrines and “ appear whenever one speaks meaningfully of the living God”:

“The Trinitarian principles are moments within the process of the divine life. . . . The first principle is the basis of God-

head, that which makes God God” [the Abyss].

The second principle is the Logos, i.e., the principle of

meaning. Both these principles are actualized in Spirit,

which is the third principle. But, he adds:

“ The third principle is in a way the whole (God is Spirit), and in a wayit is a special principle (God has the Spirit as he has the logos). It is the Spirit in whom God ‘ goes out from’ himself, the Spirit proceeds from the divine ground.”

Accordingly, when we are dealing with the Trinitarian principles, “we must begin with the Spirit rather than with the Logos. God is Spirit, and any Trinitarian statement must be derived from this basic assertion.” *° These interpretations involve a certain duality in the conceptionof the Spirit which is clearly incompatible with the filioque. Indeed, it would not be easy to reconcile them with orthodox Trinitarian doctrine at all: for they point rather to a quaternity in God. Can this be avoided? Barth attempts to do so bya strict adherence to the canon of Trinitarian orthodoxy, which lays it down that the external operations of the Trinity are undivided { opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt). He interprets the work of creation accordingly as a work of the whole Trinity, not

only of God the Father, but of God the Father with the

Son and the Holy Spirit.

There is, of course, firm Scriptural warrant for the asso-

ciation of the Son with the Father in creation; several pas-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

:

49

sages in the New Testamentassign to him a central role in

this work (e.g., John 1:3f., Heb. 1:2£., Col. 1:15 £.}. It was a vital elementin the faith of the New Testament that the historical revelation and work of Christ was instrumental to the realization of the whole purpose of God in

creation, and the writers express this by affirming that the

mediator of salvation was also the mediator of creation: in him, or through him, Cod created the world. But a difi cult question arises here: In assigning to the Son the role of mediator of creation, precisely whom did the New Son, Testament writers have in mind? Was it the eternal

the discarnate Word (logos asarkos), the second person of

ed the Trinity as such; or was it the Son who was destin and sn the counsel of God to become the Word incarnate s the who stood before the eternal eye of God as Jesu

In Christ, clothed in our humanity and bearing our sin?

elated other words, does the Son fulfill two distinct and unr ation; or roles as mediator of creation and mediator of salv

is he already from all eternity cast in the role of mediator

? Barth of salvation and as such the mediator of creation so far as maintains the latter view, and in so doing he goes

te to characterize the whole conception of the discarna ion, Word or “ second person of the Trinity ” as an abstract

logy, barely which, while indispensable to Trinitarian theo

, says appears in the New Testament. The New Testament in detachBarth, never thinks of the pre-existent Christ

ial work.” ment from the concrete content of his mediator

ough whom His conclusion is, therefore, that the Son thr the Saviour, and n tha r othe e non is ld wor the e mad Cod

is to make posthat “ the purpose and meaning of creation

man, which has sible the history of God's covenant with Christ.” ” its beginning, middle, and end in Jesus it comes to deWe are on more difficult ground when

Trinitarian work the in it Spir y Hol the of role the ng fini

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

of creation. The New Testament contains no directrefer-

ence to it at all; the only exegetical basis for it there is to

be found in those few passages which characterize the

Spirit as the author or source of life (John 6:63; I Cor. 15:45; II Cor. 8:6). The primary reference in all these passages, as Barth is constrained to acknowledge,is to the new life that has been brought to men, who were dead in sin, through the work of Christ and faith in him; but he detects in them an echo of those Old Testament passages

(especially Gen. 2:7) where the Spirit of God appears as the source of man’s very existence and, indeed, of that of all living creatures, and he proceeds to argue that while

the New Testament writers, in interpreting the life-giving

work of the Spirit in a soteriological-eschatological sense,

look beyond the cosmological or biological sense which it bears in the Old Testament, they at the same time sub-

sume the latter under the former; they regard the Spirit,

through whom the purpose of God with his creatures is realized, as the conditio sine qua non of their creaturely existence; in other words, they recognize no life in the creature apart from that which has been brought to light by the gospel of the resurrection.”*

In this way Barth seeks to maintain the principle of the filioque; but the interpretation presents serious difficulties. The most obvious is this: If the Spirit of God animates the creaturely existence of man, there must be a sense in

which it can be said that all men whoexist have the Spirit; but the New Testament is emphatic that the Spirit is a

novel gift to the Church, consequent upon and comple-

mentary to the work of the incarnate Christ. This feature of the New Testament witness is inevitably blurred if the

Spirit that animates is identified with the Spirit of the Father and the Son.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD

Bl

Barth attempts to meet this difficulty in his doctrine of man by defining more precisely the sense in which man

has Spirit. According to Barth, man, who is God's creature,

owing his existence to God and destined for fellowship

with God, is not without God. No matter what his own attitude to God may be, even though he be an atheist, it

remains true that he is not without God. This relation of

man to God, however, is not something inherent in the

constitution of man; it consists in God's free activity to-

ward man. Man is in virtue of the fact that God is for him.

Nowthis activity, this movement of God toward man, ac-

cording to Barth, is what is meant by Spirit; and thus the fact that man is can also be expressed in this form: Man has Spirit. It must not be said that man is Spirit, because Spirit is never his own possession but always comes to him as a gift. Man is, inasmuch as God gives him his Spirit. As the principle of his relation to God, Spirit is the ground of his being as man. But, says Barth, this function of the Spirit is itself grounded in the basic meaning of the Spirit as that element or factor by which man is brought into covenantfellowship with God. And thus, as the new man in the covenant lives by the fact that God gives him his

Spirit Spirit, so also does the natural man: “ It is the same

the that is for the one the principle of his renewal and for other the principle of his creaturely reality.” *

obliged In this interpretation, it seems to me, Barth is

principal to evacuate the concept of Spirit of one of the viz., elements which belongs to it in the New Testament, h himelement of subjectivization. The Spirit, as Bart itutes selfemphasizes in an earlier part of his work, const it is by the the subjective factor in the event of revelation; ond to the Spirit that men apprehend and receive and resp objective the that t Spiri the by is it God; of ation revel

52

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

event of revelation becomes subjective.” But there is no

question of a subjective element in the work of the Spirit as “ the principle of man’s -creaturely reality.” On the contrary, Barth expressly eliminates it. Spirit here signiftes a

movement which proceeds strictly and exclusively from

God to man; it has nothing whatsoever to do with man’s subjectivity.”* It is difficult to understand how Barth can maintain the identity of this inarticulate Spirit with the Spirit of the New Testament, whereby we cry, “ Abba!

Father! ” It should scarcely be necessary for me to add that in describing the Spirit as the principle of man’s creaturely

existence Barth has assigned to the Spirit a role which the

New Testament andtraditional Trinitarian theology assign

to the Son or Word. It is he, “the second person in the Trinity,” who represents the movement from God, in

which man’s creaturely existence is grounded. Spirit,

on the other hand, represents the movement toward God which reciprocates the former. In Barth’s anthropology the Spirit reduplicates the role of the Son, and the distinction between them, which underlies his defense of the filioque, disappears. The external operations of the Trinity are not only undivided — they have become indistinguishable.

The difficulties which arise, both from acceptance and

from rejection of the filioque, would seem to indicate, as I

have suggested elsewhere,” that it was a false solution to a real problem. It satisfied the immediate concern of the Christian mind to identify the Spirit that is known in the experience of salvation as the Spirit of Christ, but it raises

grave difficulties when it is extended to the operations of the Trinity in creation. The problem will meet us again in another form in the final chapter of this book.

Ill The Holy Spirit and the Church begin with three quotations: ted in dif“ Different beliefs about the Church are roo

Spirit.” * ferent beliefs or unbeliefs about the Holy

of the ure nat the ut abo s ent eem agr dis our of y “Man investigation Church will be further clarified by renewed n the Holy of the New Testament relationship betwee rd, as well as Spirit and Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Wo

the Holy Spirit and the Church. the conclusion that it to led n bee e hav we rk wo our “Tn

ecumenical of e anc adv the for e anc ort imp ve isi is of dec in close doctrine of the Church be treated

work that the to the doctrine and ist Chr of ne tri doc the to h relation bot .

of the Holy Spirit.” *

of the relation between When we take up the question are

clear that we is it , rch Chu the and rit Spi y Hol the as of current theone of the most controversial are entering

field. And when we l ica men ecu the in n sio cus dis ological of the issues iny xit ple com and ude nit mag think of the e to achieve hop not can we t tha ar cle o als volved, it is Yet I ber. pte cha ef bri a in n tio ica rif cla much by way of point from one fundamental lieve it is possible to establish

varithe se rai app and m ble pro the which we may survey ous positions taken.

reports, it is er Ord and th Fai m fro s ion tat In both quo y Spirit and the Hol the of m ble pro the t suggested tha the doctrine of to on ati rel in d ere sid con Church must be 53

54

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

. Christ. This is incontestably true, but I think it needs to be formulated in a more precise wayif we are to get it in proper focus. What do we mean bythe doctrine of Christ? The doctrine of Christ, in the primary New Testament sense, means the gospel — that series of events which God wrought in Christ for the salvation of the world. There has come into being within recent years a new appreciation — I might almost say a rediscovery of the significance of the concept “ gospel,” chiefly through the labors of New Testament scholars; we have been taughtto see that the

themeof the apostolic preaching was not a system of ideas

or a portrait of an ideal figure; it was a sequence of acts in

which God’s eternal purpose for men was definitively accomplished in history. It was, I think, the present bishop of Durham who first pointed out that this must be our starting point in the study of the Church.’ Dr. A. M. Ramsey sought to show that the Churcharose from the gospel,

and that its nature and structure can be understood only in the light of the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. His further argument that the order of the “ catholic ” Church, and, in particular, the episcopal ministry, enshrines or ex-

presses essential elements of the gospel I believe to be

untenable, but I am sure heis right in his main contention

that the whole question of the Church must be studied in the light of the gospel. Weshall have this in mind when we come to the specific

question with which we are concerned, the relation between the Holy Spirit and the Church. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish three views which are taken of this relationship, the Roman Catholic view (with which we may associate the very similar Anglo-Catholic view), the

view of the Protestant Reformation, and the Spiritualist or

Enthusiast view.

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59

I The Roman Catholic view is succinctly expressed in the official formula: The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. This formula, promulgated by Leo XIII,° has more recently been endorsed by Pius XIL° Some theologians are careful to explain that the term “soul” is here employed analogically; it is not to be taken to mean that the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church in the same sense as our souls are the souls of our bodies. He is not actually “the interior form of unity in the Church.” The immanent principle of the Church, it is explained, is found in thegifts of the Spirit, especially faith and charity, but asit is the Spirit who bestowsthese gifts and makes them operative in the Church, He mayfittingly be described as the animating and unifying principle of the Church.’ This conception fits into the basic view of the relation of the Church to Christ that is held in Roman Catholicism. In the Roman view, the Churchis primarily the successor of Christ; the presence and power of the Holy Spirit are then regarded as endowments bequeathed by Christ to the Church to enable it to discharge its supernaturalrole. the The Roman conception is presented very clearly in of following passage from the Encyclical Satis cognitum, Leo XIII:

thus “The Son of God assumed human nature .. . and conliving on earth he taught his doctrine and gave his laws, versing with men. should be And since it was necessary that his divine mission disciples, perpetuated to the end of time, he took to himself

his own authortrained by himself, and made them partakers of the

heaven ity. And when he had invoked upon them from th, he bade them go through the whole world and

Spirit of tru

had taught and what faithfully preach to all nations what he

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOCY

he had commanded, so that by the profession of his doctrine and the observance of his laws, the human race might attain

to holiness on earth and never-ending happiness in heaven.” ®

Two things are noteworthy about this conception. (1) The disciples are viewed exclusively in the role of successors to Christ; his mission, which is left incomplete by

him at his departure,° devolves upon them. In the wordsof

the present pope, “It is through them, by-commission of the divine Redeemer himself, that Christ’s apostolate as Teacher, King, and Priest is to endure.” * And to this end they are endowed with his authority. The main emphasis,

in Roman ecclesiology, is always on the authority which

the apostles received from Christ and transmitted to the

hierarchy of the Roman Church. This authority to teach (munus doctrinale), to govern (munus regale), and to sacrifice (munus sacerdotale ), is described by the present pope as “ the fundamental law of the whole Church.” **

There is, no doubt, a certain measure of truth in the Roman Catholic view, and the Roman Catholic theolo-

gians can marshal an imposing array of texts from the

New Testament to support it. There is a sense in which

the mission of Christ is continued in the mission of the

apostles: “ As the Father has sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). There is a sense in which thegift of the Holy Spirit may be described as the divine principle of power and authority on which the apostolic mission of the Church depends. But in the Roman Church this dependence is understood as possession; i.e., the power and au-

thority, which derive from the Holy Spirit, are held to be

given to the Church itself to exercise; the Holy Spirit is

regarded as the source or principle of the Church’s power. It is clear that this is far removed from the way in which the situation was understood in the Church of the New

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

57

Testament. In the New Testament the authority of the Holy Spirit is an authority to which the Church remains

subject; it is the principle of the Church’s obedience. The Council of Constantinople showed a trueinstinct for the essential when it defined the first of the attributes of the

Spirit as “ Lordship ”; for the Church of the New Testa-

ment did not experience the Spirit as an immanent prin-

ciple by which it succeeded to the authority ofits Lord but

as a presence in whom its living Lord continued to exer-

cise his own authority. The presence of the Holy Spirit

was marked by the confession of the Lordship of Jesus

(I Cor. 12:3), not the magisterium of the Church. (2) The other feature of the Roman Catholic theory which should be noted is this. In the assumption that the mission of Christ is transmissible to his disciples, there is an implicit denial of the completeness and finality of the work of Christ, and, with that, a Joss ofits evangelical character; for what makes the gospel truly gospel is the fact that “it is finished ”; God's decisive deed for the salvation of the world is done once forall and nothing needs to be added to it. In the Roman theory the evangelical note is inevichartably lost, and the work of Christ assumes a legal

theologians acter. It is significant that when the Roman

by are seeking to prove the foundation of the Church

lation ” Christ, it is always to his teaching and his “legis XIII, when that they point. Thus, for example, Pope Leo

ce of he adduces the incarnation as the supreme instan

the visibility God’s dealing with men, which is shown in ation in incarn the of nt conte the bes descri h, Churc of the nature . . . these terms: “ The Son of God assumed human and gave and thus living on earth he taught his doctrine

purpose his laws.” And to the question, What was Christ's

“This: to in founding the Church? he answers formally:

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

transmit to it the same mission and the same mandate

which he had received from the Father, that they should be perpetuated.” *? The real ground of the Church is the necessity of continuing the teaching and ruling office of

Christ. The Churchis not essentially related to the gospel;

for in Roman Christianity there is no gospel. The basic

constituents of the Church are the power of teaching and

the power of jurisdiction; in the exercise of these powers the Church carries on “the same mission and the same mandate which he had received from the Father.” Its

empowermentto fulfill this mission derives from the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from this doctrinaire and authori-

tarian Christ, and who, as such, is a Spirit of authority.

It appears, thus, that in the Roman Catholic view the Holy Spirit fulfills a purely instrumental role in establish-

ing a direct continuity between Christ and the Church.

There is no place in the Roman Catholic system for a con-

frontation of the Church with the Holy Spirit as Lord, ice., as witness to the Lordship of Christ over the Church. Rather, the Holy Spirit, as the soul of the Church,is the source from which the Church is inflated with its own au-

thoritarian claim. Hence there is a loss of the sense of the “ personality ” of the Holy Spirit, which is rooted in the experience of confrontation with one who is Lord. In

Roman Catholic theology the chiefinterest is always in the effects of the Holy Spirit, the gifts and graces that spring

from his indwelling; the Holy Spirit is thought of as an

impersonal principle, a source or channel of supernatural endowments, rather than a Lord and a Person. “ This com-

munication of the Spirit of Christ is the channel through whichall the gifts, powers, and extraordinary graces found superabaundantly in the Headas in their source flow into all the members of the Church, and are perfected daily in

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

59

them according to the place they hold in the mystical body of Christ.” ** A further consequence of the Roman Catholic view of the relation of the Church and the Holy Spirit is the introduction of a radical distinction in the Church between

those who exercise authority and those upon whom it is

exercised. Roman Catholic theology is emphatic that “ the Church must be a hierarchical society; the apostles and their successors must be the chiefs and rulers.” * “ That

those who exercise power in this body areits first and chief

members must be maintained uncompromisingly. It is through them, by commission of the divine Redeemer him-

self, that Christ’s apostolate as Teacher, King, and Priest is to endure.” ** The popeis at pains to resist the inference

that these bearers of the apostolic succession have a

monopoly of the Holy Spirit. He stresses that the Holy Spirit “is personally present and divinely active in all the

members,” but he adds this qualification that “in the in-

ferior members he acts also through the ministry of the higher members.*°

This conception that the gift of the Holy Spirit to the

Church is “ channeled ” through some ofits “ higher mem-

bers” plays a prominent part also in Anglo-Catholic theory, andit is worth our while to look at it in the form in

which it is presented by some of the members of that group. By far the most interesting presentation of the

althesis is that of the bishop of Durham, to which I have

ready referred, and in which he attempts to find a basis

of for the episcopal structure of the Church in the nature that the gospel as such. The bishop appears to recognize some of historical arguments cannot bear the weight that

to his friends attempt to rest upon them, and he appeals that them only in a secondary way to support a position

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

rests primarily on dogmatic grounds. “'To burrow in the New Testament for forms of ministry and imitate them is

archaeological religion: to seek that form of ministry

‘which the whole New Testament creates is the more evangelical way. And our view of the ministry had better be evangelical than archaeological.” *" According to this view, the meaning andstructure of the

Church are determined by the gospel of Christ crucified

and risen. The Church is the body of Christ which is created by his dying and rising again, and in which his

dying and rising again find continuing expression. To this

end,it is argued, there mustbein the structure of the body

organs that have the special function of representing the

gospel of Christ to the Church, This office, which origi-

nally belonged to the apostles, is now held by the bishops, who “are regarded as the successors of the apostles in office and as the organs of the Church’s unity.” ** In The Apostolic Ministry, a large volume of essays on the subject by a group of Anglo-Catholic scholars, published in 1946, the thesis was propounded that the apos-

tolate represents the “ essential roinistry, and that this essential ministry is continued in the episcopate, which is

thus “the repository of the commission which Christ gave to his apostles ”; ** it was further emphasized that the essential ministry, which is the guarantee of the Church’s existence, is continued by the chain of episcopal succession apart from the continuity of the Church as a whole. The plain implication of this view is that the Haly Spirit is not’given to the Church, but is canalized alongside the Church. Anglo-Catholics are fain to denythis; e.g., Bishop Ramsey writes: “ The succession of bishops is not an isolated channel of grace, since from the first Christ bestows

grace through every sacramental act of his body, But cer-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

61

tain actions in this work of grace are confined to the bishops.” *» When they contend, however, as even Bishop

Ramseydoes, that episcopacy is of the esse of the Church,

it is impossible to resist the inference that the gift of the Holy Spirit as such does notconstitute the Church.” In the New Testament the main emphasis is laid on the commonparticipation in the Spirit by all the members of the Church. It is by this common participation in the Spirit

that they are baptized into one body. Within this unity,

however, and onthe basis of it, there is room for considerable diversity of function, for the manifestation of the Spirit, which is given to each individual within the unity

of the body, appears in a wide variety of charismatic en-

dowments (I Cor. 12:4 ff.). It is the unity of the Spirit diwhich forms the esse of the Church; the charismatic versity’ belongs to its bene esse. But Anglo-Catholicism to the reverses this order; it takes one office, which belongs

esse of order of charismatic diversity, and makes it of the

by the Church: it thus destroys the unity of the Church y making a radical cleavage between the episcopal clerg and thelaity. Two further questions emerge from this position. When placed the episcopate (with or without the pope) is thus gned on the side of Christ over against the Church and assi to the the exclusive function of re-presenting the gospel If the op? bish the to el gosp the s esent re-pr who Church, re-presents pope is the vicar of Christ to the world, who for these Christ to the pope? The singular lack of provision icism needs in both Roman Catholicism and Anglo-Cathol must be regarded as highly significant. is laid on the asis emph e wher s arise tion ques ar simil A of the truth the of n odia cust the as ) pope bishop (or raised by such gospel. It is the question that is always

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

claims to custodianship: Quis custodiet custodes? “Who will take care of the caretakers? ” The claim can have no more ultimate basis than the word of those whoassert it — the logical conclusion is the Roman dogma of papal infallibility — for if it can be tested by reference to some ob-

jective standard, the claim becomes meaningless. This is

acknowledged with a candor bordering on naiveté by Congarin his remarks on the use of the Vincentian canon,

quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, (“what has been believed everywhere, always, and by everybody ”) as a criterion of catholicity: “ If this ‘canon’ werereally the standard of Catholicism, then the supreme

magisterium would rest with historians, for it is their busi-

ness to say, from a study of the texts, what has been be-

lieved always, everywhere, by everyone. The magisterium,

always living in the Church by the twofold principle of the apostolic succession and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, simply declares what is the belief of the universal Church. The past may be known bythefact of the present; the present is not determined bya reference to the past. Here we touch upon a decisive issue between the Protestant Reformation and the Church, for the very idea ofreformation is involved. Is the nature of the apostolic Church suchthat, having fundamentally erred, she can be brought back to the truth and reformed by professors in the name of critical study? Protestantism only exists in virtue of an affirmative answer to this question, justified by the Vincentian “canon.’” ” Congar proceeds to draw the astound-

ing conclusion that, while the apostolic magisterium

apparently confers upon its infallible bearer a license to

rewrite history, theProtestant attitude, which places some reliance on the critical study of the historical records by “ professors,” is based on the principle of private judgment!

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63

Il The evangelical-Protestant understanding of the relation between the Holy Spirit and the Church, to which we now turn, is determined primarily by its concern forthe integrity of the gospel. It is this concern that underlies its critical attitude to the “ Roman Catholic ” position in this matter. The fundamental objection to the Roman Catholic position is that it destroys the gospel by obliterating any distinction between the gospel and the teaching of the Church. In Roman Catholicism, as we have seen, the

Church is to all intents and purposes the successor of Christ; it has inherited from him, through the apostles,

“the same mission and the same mandate which he had

received from the Father,” and it has been endowed with

the power of the Holy Spirit to enable it to fulfill it. The consequence is that thegospel is identified exclusively with what is spoken by the Church, and there is no provision whereby the gospel may be spokento the Church.

As Bishop Newbigin says, “ the idea of ‘the Word’ prac-

tically disappears. There is still teaching (didache) as to what the Church believes and does. But there is no preaching (kerygma) of that Word by which the Church, not only initially but always, lives.” 7° The heart of the Protestant position is found in its conception of what may be called the abiding polarity between Christ and the Church. In the Roman Catholic view, this polarity belonged only to the initial relation behis detween Christ and the twelve disciples, and on parture it was immediately changed to a relation of conto stand tinuity. In other words, the Twelve ceased then

to Christ in the relation of disciples to their Master; they them themselves succeeded to his mastery, and to enable

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

to exercise it they received the gift of the Spirit which is

conceived as a miraculous, immanent endowment. Now,

no doubt, the transition from discipleship to apostleship marked a decisive turn in the experience of the Twelve,

but that it involved a turn of ninety degrees in their relation to Christ, as the Roman Catholic theory that they took over his mission requires, cannot be sustained by the

evidence of the New Testament. According to the New Testament, the mission of Christ does not require to be

taken over, for it is complete; what he accomplished is

sufficient onceforall. It requires only to be communicated to men; and this is the primary responsibility laid upon

the apostles. They were appointed, not successors. to Christ, but witnesses to him; their task was to point to him

by recalling (anamnesis, I Cor. 11:24), proclaiming (kerygma, I Cor. 2:4), transmitting (paradosis, I Cor. 15:8), and testifying to (martyrion I Cor. 1:6) the salient facts of his mission. It is misleading, therefore, to speak of the mission of the apostles as a continuation of the mission of Christ, as if they were on the same level. The mission of the apostles remains subordinate and instrumental to the mission of Christ (in relation to which it might be more accurately described as a commission ). In other words, the apostolic function of the Twelve remains a ministerium; it does not become a magisterium: “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (II Cor. 4:5). The Roman Catholic theory that the apostolate takes over the mission of Christ is based on the ground thatsince his bodily presence was withdrawn, the apostles (as representing the Church) now constitute the body through which heacts vicariously. But the Roman Catholic interpretation obliterates any real distinction between the body

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65

and Him whoacts throughit; the polarity which existed between Christ and the Twelve is virtually fused into an identity. This is a conception which the teaching of the Johannine Christ on the coming of the Spirit seems almost to have been expressly framed to exclude. Take any au-

thoritative statement of the Roman theory, such as that

given by Léo XIII in the encyclical Satis cognitum,” and

reduce its pontifical magniloquence to the simplestyle of the New Testament: it makes Christ appear to have said to his disciples, “When I go away, you will take myplace.” This, of course, is very different from what he did say. He promised that his place would be taken by the Spirit, (allos parakletos), toward whom the Twelve would stand in the samerelation of polarity as they had stood to Christ during his bodily presence with them. The Spirit is the true vicar of Christ, Christ’s alter ego, and was known as such in the Church bythe fact that he was encountered in the same role of Lord (Kyrios) as Christ himself had been. In the Roman Catholic view the Lordship of Christ devolves upon the apostles, and the Holy Spirit is promised them asassistance in filling their lordly role. But according to the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is essentially Lord, because he only comes from him whois exalted as Lord by his triumph over sin and death (Acts 2:33). The role

of the apostles is correlated with the work of the Spirit. It

is their commission to bear witness to the Lordship of Christ, But it is not in their power to establish it among men, because it consists, not just in an authority to teach

and to give commands, but in a work of salvation which

he completed by his exaltation. They can confess it and

testify to it; but without the testimony of the Spirit who comes from the exalted Lord, it cannot be established

among men.

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

It is the recognition of the Lordship of the Spirit and the abidingpolarity in the relation between the Spirit and the Church that distinguishes the Protestant doctrine. From the Roman Catholic side the charge is sometimes brought against the Protestant doctrine that it fails to recognize the immanence or indwelling of the Spirit, which is a main

feature of the New Testament, just as it fails to recognize

the incarnation as “the real and actual gift of the divine life to human nature.” Congar writes: “As a form of re-

ligion and of relation to Christ, and in him to the blessed

Trinity, Protestantism has stopped short with John the Baptist and still awaits the fulfillment of the baptism of water and of the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit, first fruits of our heritage. It forgets that since John the Baptist,

God is incarnate.” ** The Protestant rejoinder to this must be that Catholicism fails to recognize the Spirit who indwells as the Spirit who is Kyrios, the Spirit whose mission it is to bear witness to Christ. The Spirit who indwells the Roman Catholic Church bears witness to— the Church;

it is a spirit that says, Tu es Petrus, not, Kyrios lesous (“Jesus is Lord”) (I Cor. 12:3). In the Protestant understanding the Spirit does truly indwell the Church; only he makes his indwelling presence known, not by inflating the Church with a sense of its own privilege and power, but by directing its attention toits living and exalted Lord and by exposing it to his grace. This is the reason why the locus of the Holy Spirit in the Church is defined morespecifically as the * means of grace” (the Word, sacraments, and prayer) —i.e., precisely those functions of the Church in which it looks away from itself to Christ.2” It is not that Protestantism does not take seriously the promise of Christ’s continued presence with his Church by the indwelling spirit. Only, it understands the presence of Christ

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67

as a real presence, not a fusion of identity. When the

Pauline figure of the body of Christ is pressed to yield the conclusion that “the Church is, as it were, another Christ,” ** as is frequently done in Catholicism, it may be said with confidence that such a thought would have horrified the apostle, for whom the efficacy of the gospel de-

pended upon the absolute pre-eminence of Christ (Rom. 1:4; Col. 1:18; 2:10). What we have by the koinonia of the Holy Spirit is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, his

presence as an evangelical, saving presence — which it cannot be if there is any fusion or confusion of identity between Christ and the Church. Conversely, if the union between Christ and the Church wereof an organic nature, the mission of the Holy Spirit would be redundant. The mission of the Holy Spirit does indeed effect the union be-

tween Christ and the Church, but in such a way that at

the same time it attests the indelible distinction between them: it underscores the fact that the Christ who presents

himself to the Church in the Holy Spirit is the Christ who

died and rose again — “ Christ clothed with his gospel,as

Calvin expressed it.” It is this identity between the remembered Christ and the Christ present in the Spirit which is expressed in the Protestant doctrine of the means of grace. Thus, while Roman Catholicism interprets the Spirit as the soul of the Church andsoblurs the distinction

between Christ and the Church, Protestantism recognizes

the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ, ie., the Spirit in which Christ, remaining identical with himself, is present with his Church as Saviour and Lord. Lil

It will serve further to clarify the Protestant doctrine if we proceed to consider the third main view of the rela-

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

tion between the Holy Spirit and the Church which has been current in Christendom. This view is known by vari-

ous names, spiritualism, enthusiasm, Schwdrmeret; it is the

view represented in its extreme form by the Anabaptists of the Reformation period and held in modified forms by those Churches which trace their ancestry from the Anabaptists. Since the Anabaptist movementarose onthesoil of the Reformation (thoughits roots may go further back), its enthusiasm is sometimes taken to be a trait of Protestantism as such; but while Anabaptism and Protestantism

were alike opposed to Rome, there was a radical difference between them in their understanding of the Holy Spirit, and, as everyone knows, Luther's opposition to the Anabaptists was scarcely less bitter than his opposition to Rome. Enthusiasm exalts the sovereign freedom of the Spirit over against the Roman Catholic tendency to canalize and domesticate the Spirit in the Church, but in such a way as

virtually to sever the connection between the mission of the Spirit and the historical Christ. The emphasis is laid

on the immediate, subjective experience of the Spirit in the individual rather than on his appropriation of “the

redemption purchased by Christ” in the work of his incarnate life. The real attitude of enthusiasm (and this was openly avowedin its more extravagant forms such as Montanism and Joachimism) is that the dispensation of the Spirit superseded the historical revelation of Christ. This is concealed in modern forms of enthusiasm beneath an appearance of devotion to the Christ of the New Testament, butit is not really changed; for the historical revelation of Christ is treated as the stimulus to a subjective spiritual experience in the individual, not as itself the content of that experience. The spiritualist individual experi-

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69

ences his own conversion and the resultant spiritual glow

rather than Jesus Christ and him crucified; when he bears

his. testimony, it is to speak of his new-found peace and

happiness rather than to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

One of the purposesof the filioque clause was to estab-

lish an indissoluble connection between the mission of the

Spirit and the work of the incarnate Christ and so to determine the specific character of Christian spirituality. In

severing this connection, enthusiasm leaves itself with no

objective criterion by which to “try the spirits ” and thus

exposesitself to the dangers of an unregulated-spirituality.

It tends to issue in “varieties of religious experience ~

rather than a saving knowledge of God in Christ.

Roman Catholicism has always been the most impla-

cable foe of enthusiasm, because it sees in it, rightly, a loosening of the historical connection with the incarnation

which is essential to an authentic Christian experience of

the Spirit. In Catholicism itself this connection is maintained primarily by means of institutional continuity; and, in principle, there can be no objection to this. If the in-

carnation is really God’s decisive deed for the salvation of

the world, and not merely anillustration of a general prin-

ciple, it must in some way be “ extended” if it is to benefit

those who are not immediately contemporaneous with it;

and if, further, the incarnation is taken seriously as the

entrance of God into humanity and his submission to the conditions of human existence, it would be entirely con-

sistent that the “extension” should involve ordinary historical factors of transmission and communication, and even an institution. In the Roman Catholic view, the insti-

tution of the Church is “the extension of the incarnaits tion.” * It is through the continuing institution — and continuity consists, of course, in the “apostolic succes-

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

sion” — that the benefits of the incarnation are extended and communicated to men. Theclaim is justified by appeal

to the incarnational principle or “law of incarnation.” * It is not claimed that institutional continuity by itself is sufficient; the assistance of the Holy Spirit is also essential.

But the Holy Spirit, understood as the soul of the Church, is canalized within the historical institution, and institu-

tional continuity remains paramount. In the Roman Cath-

olic view, therefore, the Spirit comes to us, so to speak,

horizontally, along the avenue of historical continuity. This is precisely what enthusiasm rejects. In the enthusiast view the Spirit comesvertically,” and is not channeled through media in the horizontal dimension of history. Indeed, there is no mediation of any kind; every man is directly accessible to the Spirit and is not dependent on the mediation of pope, Church,Bible, or sacrament. The true Protestant position differs from both Catholi-

cism and enthusiasm, in each of which it recognizes a mix-

ture of truth anderror. It is at one with enthusiasm in opposing the Catholic attempt to canalize the Spirit in the historically continuous institution, but it agrees with Roman Catholicism in condemning the enthusiast repudiation ofali historical mediation. In other words, Protestant-

ism recognizes an element of truth in the Roman Catholic insistence on historical continuity, in accordance with the

“law of incarnation”: it also recognizes an element of

truth in the enthusiast insistence on the sovereign independence of the Spirit. But it sees error when these truths are isolated from each other and opposed to each other. According to the understanding of the Reformers, the gift of the Spirit is not canalized in the historical body which is continuous with the incarnation, as the Roman Catholics

hold (theSpirit, not having been incarnate, cannot be sub-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

ral

jected to the “law of incarnation”), but neither is it entirely independent of that body, as the enthusiasts teach (for the Spirit is the Spirit of the Incarnate, the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son, Filiogue).

Enthusiasm presents no serious challenge to Protestant-

ism; for enthusiasm, when it pretends to a Christian experience of the Spirit in independence of the historical tradition, is a patent victim of self-deception. The real issue lies between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism,

and it hinges on the question, What precisely is conveyed through the medium of historical continuity? According to

the Roman Catholic view, the Churchis itself “ the extension of the incarnation,’ but in making this claim the

Church tends to arrogate to itself the Lordship of the

Spirit, and the incarnation tends to be robbed ofits cen-

trality and finality. The true answer is surely that whatis

extended in the Churchis the apostolic paradosis of the in-

carnation. But the incarnation itself can be extended only

as the Incarnate himself re-presents himself in answer to the prayer of faith which arises from the apostolic witness. The apostolic testimony provides the sacramental element which the Spirit uses to re-present Christ to men; butit is by the Spirit, who is Lord, and not by any power inherent

in the apostles or their successors, that the Christ remem-

bered in the tradition re-presents himself as living Lord

and Saviour. In thus correlating the Spirit with the Word

(by faith and prayer), the Protestant Church maintains

both the centrality of the incarnation and the sovereign

Lordship of the Spirit.

IV The Holy Spirit and the Word I the Churches of the Reformation the Holy Spirit is associated pre-eminently with the means of grace, of

which the first and foremost is the Word. This association

is enshrined in the doctrine of “the inner witness of the Holy Spirit” (testimonium Spiritus sancti internum), which is one of the best known elements in the Reformed theological tradition — and also one of the most difficult

whenit is a question of determining its precise meaning. The controversy that has raged around the inspiration of

the Bible during the present century, and is not yet re-

solved, reflects the persistence of the difficulty. A fresh

attempt to elucidate the meaning of the Reformed doctrine concerning the Spirit and the Word may therefore

have a contemporary relevance as well as a historical in-

terest.

i Although the doctrine of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit owesits classical formulation to Calvin, he was not its originator; andit is advisable — indeed,it is essential — to go back to its antecedents in Luther and the Lutheran Reformation. The doctrine early began to assumea rigid aspect under the pressure of interconfessional controversy, and something of this rigidity is already apparent in the thought of Calvin (as it is in that of the later Luther). To grasp the real meaning and intention of the doctrine, we 72

THE HOLY SPIRTT AND THE WORD

73

must look at it as it was before the hardening process had set in.

Thefirst thing we note is that the context in which the

“" doctrine of the witness of the Spirit was originally invoked

is not that of authority (in the formal sense), but rather (as we maycall it) that of power. Initially at least, the authority of Scripture was not an issue between Luther and Rome. His basic complaint against the Church ofhis

day was that it treated Scripture only as a means of establishing a historical relation with Christ. In the Romansystem Scripture was (and is) a supernaturally authenti-

cated record of the events concerning Jesus Christ; and the only link that connects that record of the past with

our present is furnished by the continued existence of the Church, The re-presentation of Christ belongs exclu-

sively to the Church, which, on the basis of the historical

record (and the unwritten tradition) claims the powerto re-present the body and blood of Christ to God in the sacrifice of the mass. What Luther found was that this theory, which is plausible enoughin its way,is destructive

of the gospel; for the gospel can retain its evangelical

character only if it remains free to come as God’s gracious gift of salvation fo the Church — which it cannot be if it is made subject to the power of the Church and dependent on the operation of the Church. But while the apparatus of

the Church failed him in his quest for the gospel, he made

the discovery that there is a power in the Wordthat is able to leap over the gulf of the centuries and speak direct to the heart of the believer. A living, saving, evangelical faith

can arise only when this power which makes the Word a living Word is encountered, ie., only where the Word proves itself to be the vehicle of the living Christ, “the cradle in which Christ lies.” This power cannot be the

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOCY

power of the Church — the Church at best can produce a

human faith in the veracity of the record (fides historica) — it is the power of God himself, the Holy Spirit.

The pragmatic character of Luther's doctrine of the wit-

ness of the Spirit is further evidenced by the fact thatit is associated primarily with the living word of preaching

rather than with the written word of Scripture. It is sig-

nificant that the Augsburg Confession contains no article

on Scripture, but only on the ministry:

“In order that we may obtain this faith [by which we are justified] there has been instituted the ministry of preaching

the gospel and dispensing the sacraments. Forit is through the Word and the sacraments as means that the Holy Spirit is

given, who worksfaith in those who hear the gospel, when and

where it seems good to God.” t

It is in the gospel in the actuality of being proclaimed (viva vox evangelii) that the witness of the Spirit becomes operative to produce assurance offaith. This emphasis on the preached word as the instrument of the Spirit is found also in some of the classical documents of the Reformed faith. In the Geneva Catechism of 1542, Calvin discusses the question how weare to use the Scriptures to our profit, and he lays it down thatit is

not sufficient to read them at home; all must listen to-

gether to the teaching given bythe pastors in the Church, by whose mouth wereceive the teaching of the Saviour

himself.’ Similarly, the Second Helvetic Confession, after

stating that the canonical Scriptures are the true Word of God, proceeds to affirm that “when that Word is proclaimed to us in the Church today by preachers duly

called, we believe it is the word of God itself that is pro-

claimed.” * Andit is in connection with the preached word that both documents introduce the witness of the Holy

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WORD

|

75

Spirit. The same emphasis is clearly expressed in the familiar words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

“The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word an effectual means of convincing and

converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith unto salvation.” #

|

Inthese statements the witness of the Spirit is connected

with the effect or efficacy of the Word in use; it has no

| bearing on the character of the Word antecedent to use;

i.e., it carries no implication concerning the canonical au-

thority or the inspiration of Scripture. Luther, as is well known, felt himself free to discriminate within Scripture between those writings which wereefficacious to produce {faith in Christ and those which were not. Whether this discrimination was well founded, and why he did notpress

' it to what seems to beits logical conclusion, are questions | that do not concern ushere; the point is mentioned merely to emphasize the fact that for Luther the witness of the

Holy Spirit was not a witness concerning Scripture itself,

but a witness to Christ, to whom Scripture stands in an in-

strumental relationship.

Calvin’s interest and emphasis in the doctrine are basi-

cally the same as Luther’s. The testimony of the Spirit is

associated primarily with the efficacy of the Word, its

power to create faith in the hearts of men: “ The Word is the instrument by which the Lord dispenses to believers

the iHumination of his Spirit.” * But Calvin introduces a

significant addition. The Wardis not only the instrument,

heefficacy” rt fo s, es tn wi ’s it ir Sp e th of ct je gb o s butal of the Word is contingent on anacknowledgmentof its: —— aS

—

divine origin, and it is the divine origin of Scripture that is certified by the witness of the Spirit in the first instance:

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

“ As God alone is a sufficient witness to himself in his own

Word,so also the Word will never gain credit in the hearts of men, till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the

Spirit. .. . For though it win our reverence by its internal

majesty, it never seriously affects ustill it is sealed by the Spirit in our hearts. Thus, being illuminated by his power, we believe, not on the strength of our own judgmentor thatof others, that Scripture _is from God; we establish it with a certainty

superior to human judgment (just as if we actually beheld the presence of God himself in it) that Scripture came to us, by the ministry of men, from the very mouth of God.” ®

The testimony of the Spirit is equivalent to an affidavit that Godis the author of Scripture, and whenthis is given,

Scripture “obtains complete authority with believers, when they are satisfied it came from heaven, as if the living accents of God himself were heard in it.”™ The position is not that men, finding the message of Scripture confirmed in their hearts by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, are led to a conviction of its divine origin and authority; but first they receive by the Spirit certification of

the authority of Scripture, and then they experience the power of its message.

The thought of Calvin is faithfully reproduced in the well known statement of the Westminster Confession concerning the authority of Scripture: after acknowledging the subordinate role of the Church’s testimony and reciting the many marvelous qualities of Scripture “ whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God,”

the Confession proceeds: “ Yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance ofthe infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy _ Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our heart.” ® The testimony of the Spirit, it is clear, is here

understood to deliver a formal theological judgment re-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WonrD

Tt

garding the authority of Scripture, and thus, in effect, to

provide a ready-made solution to the difficult problems that surround the establishmentof the canon. The most difficult of these problems, in the eyes of the Reformers, arose from the fact that, as a matter of history, the canon was defined by the Church, and henceit could

be plausibly argued that the authority of Scripture was

in some sense derived from the authority of the Church. It was a source of particular embarrassment to them that ! Augustine, whom they were so eager to claim as an ally, hadin this matter expressed himself in a way which

seemedto play directly into the hands of the enemy: “I would not believe the gospel, unless I were influenced by the authority of the Church.”* Calvin attempts to “ deCatholicize” Augustine by arguing that he meant only that “the authority of the Church is an introduction to

prepare us for the faith of the gospel,” ° in the sense that

it is the Church which by the (human) authority of its

testimony directs us to the superior, divine authority of

Scripture, not that the authority of Scripture is essentially

subordinate to that of the Church. How, then,is the au-

thority of Scripture established? Calvin countered the “ Catholic” position with the doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit, but he was unwittingly led by hispolemical interest to interpret the latter in terms of the former;

i.e., while he denied that the Church could confer formal

authority on Scripture, he ascribed this formal role to the Holy Spirit, whose testimony he equated with the formal decision of an ecclesiastical council on the divine origin nd authority of Scripture. Thus Calvin conceives a twofold operation of the Spirit in the Word, which we may describe (though he does not use these terms) as formal andmaterial: the Spirit forthally attests the authority of

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

canonical Scripture as a whole, and then materially attests itsspecificcontent. | The formal aspect of the witness of the Spirit to the Word yields the conviction (one “ which requires no reasons . . . but can only be produced by a revelation from heaven ”) that Scripture came from God, that “ we have received it from God’s own mouth by the ministry of wee

er ee Se

ee -

men.” ‘? Calvin based the authority of Scripture on its

divine origin (which, of course, does not exclude the mediate authorship of men). He developed no theory of

inspiration to explain how the Word of God came to

prophets and apostles, and to us through them, and he

appears to have looked with suspicion on the view that inspiration involves a suspension of the normalfaculties."*

He is content to say that the Spirit of God spoke by the mouth of the prophets, and to rest this conviction on the

witness of the same Spirit in our hearts. But now, does the Holy Spirit furnish us with such a formal attestation of the authority of Scripture, as Calvin suggests? That this question points up the essential weakness of the doctrine, “the Achilles heel,” as Strauss called

it, is amply proved by the development that took place in the century following Calvin’s death. The mounting stress

| of controversy with Rome soon madeit apparent that the inner witness of the Spirit was too vague, elusive, and

|

“ subjective” a ground on which to rest the authority of

Scripture, and that it was necessary to find something

more tangible and “ objective” to pit against the histori-

cally grounded position of Rome. His successors, there-

fore, went beyond Calvin, who had been contentto leave the fact of inspiration within the realm of Spirit (where it belongs); they proceeded to elaborate a rational or quasirational-account of the way in which the Word was in-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WORD

79

spired into the prophets and apostles, and thus trans-

formed inspiration into a theory which was capable of

objective verification.

The theory which took shape and acquired the status of orthodoxy in the Reformed Churches is well known. The

real question which ought to be asked about this theory is not whether it is plausible in itself, nor whether it is

susceptible of objective verification, but whether it is compatible with a Christian understanding of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit. And in order to do this, it is

necessary to examineits historical antecedents. HT

Although there were some elements of novelty about the theory, or rather the theories, of inspiration advanced by the theologians of the seventeenth century, they were for the most part a revival of ideas that had been current in the Church in the early centuries and that represented an amalgam of ideas derived from late Judaism and the religious world of Hellenism. In the popular religions of ancient Greece, inspiration wasconceived in aCmechanical sense as a kind of divine frenzy or ecstasy which camé upon the devotees with overwhelming force, suspending or superseding their normal faculties and impelling them to speech or bodily movements over which they hadno control. The theory was used to account for the oracles at Delphi and other places, and sometimes it received a semimaterialistic form — the source of inspiration was understood to be a vapor

exhaled from the earth, and it was whenthe priestess, who

sat on a tripod above the chasm, received this vapor into

her body, that she gave forth prophetic utterance. The theory is set forth by Plutarch thus: “ Moreover, the earth

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

sends forth for men streams of many other potencies, some

of them producing derangements, diseases, or deaths; others helpful, benignant, and beneficial, as is plain from

the experience of persons who have come upon them. But the prophetic current and breath is most divine and holy,

whetherit issue by itself through the air or come in the company of running waters; for when it is instilled into

the body, it creates in souls an unaccustomed and unusual

temperament, the peculiarity of which it is hard to de-

scribe with exactness, but analogy offers many comparisons. It is likely that by warmth and diffusion it opens up certain passages through which impressions of the future are transmitted, just as wine, when its fumesrise to the head, reveals many unusual movements and also words

stored away and unperceived.” ** Plato, who also saw this

divine “ madness” as the source of prophecy,” gave it a

wider range as the source of poetry as well, and argued

that poetry, no less than prophecy, was the word of God. Plato says: “For all the good epic poets utter all those fine poems, not from art, but as inspired and possessed as

the good lyric poets likewise; just as the Corybantian worshipers do not dance whenin their senses, so the lyric poets do not indite those fine songs in their senses, but

when they have started on the melody and thythm they

begin to be frantic, and it is under possession —as the bacchants are possessed andnot in their senses, when they draw honey and milk from the rivers — that the soul of the lyric poets does the same thing, by their own report. . . . Andfor this reason God takes away the mindof these men and uses them as his ministers, just as he does

soothsayers and godly seers, in order that we who hear them may knowthat it is not they who utter these words

of great price, when they are out of their wits, but thatit

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WORD

Si

is God himself who speaks and addresses us through them.”7* ee , These conceptions were familiar tdPhilowho imported them into his interpretations of the Old Testament: he

associated prophetic inspiration, not specialtisight, but with the involuntary utterance of words by a person in

a stateof ecstasy when his own reasoning faculties are

_Suspended: “For a prophet has no utterance of his own, but all his utterances come from elsewhere, the echoes ee

-_—_—

—

o-

of another’s voice . . . he is the vocal instrument of Cod smitten and played by his invisible hand.” ” Whilelittle trace of any such theories of inspiration can be foundin the Judaism of Palestine and the East, the way

was prepared for their reception by developments which_ took place theretoo, aboveall by the shift of interest from _thespokento thewrittenword, and, in consequence, from ‘the prophetto the scribe. It had become axiomatic by the_

timeoftheMaccabees that the living word of prophecy “had ceased (I Mace. 9:27; cf. Ps. 74:9), but compensation was found in the possession of the written word. The change may be dated roughly from the day on which Ezra the scribe read “the book of the law of Moses”to “all the people gathered together as one man into the street that was before the water gate” (Neh., ch. 8), and from the collection of the corpus of the prophetic writings in the third century. The viva vox of the prophet was replaced by the written word of prophecy (and of the law and “the writings,” which by an extension of the idea of

prophetic inspiration were also regarded as the work of the Spirit), and the holy book cameto be regarded as the

standing organ of the Holy Spirit.”

With this transference of interest from the primary stage of inspiration (the delivery of the Word by the prophet)

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

to the secondary (theliterary preservation and interpretation of the Word by the scribe), a decisive step was

taken toward the fusion of Judaic and Hellenistic ideas of inspiration which took place in the thought of Philo. The clearest example of this is to be seen in Philo’s famous accountof the origin of the Septuagint, in which he says that although the translators had often a choice of Greek synonyms for the Hebrew words of the original, © they prophesied like ecstatics, not one one way and another another, but all the same names and words, as if an in-

visible teacher dictated to each one of them.” * Here inspiration has become predominantly verbal inspiration, i.e, the supply of words to speakers and, moreespecially, to writers, independently of their own volition. » This conception was first introduced into Christian thought by someof the apologists of the second century, who applied it to the Old Testament prophets; both JustinMartyr ' and|Athenagoras liken them to musical _ instruments in the hands of a divine player. The theory

did not receive dogmatic sanction, and interest in the

question of inspiration tended to diminish as the authority of Scripture came to be overshadowedbythe authority of \the Church. But it was inevitably revived when the Reformation asserted the authority of Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) and opposedit to the authority of the Church. So far as the Reformers themselves are concerned, they realized that Scripture could have authority in the Church and over the Church only if its authority stemmed from that same source from which the Church derivedits existence. This is what they tried to express in their different ways, Luther bysaying that the Bible contains Christ like

a cradle, Calvin even more strongly with his doctrine that

none but the Spirit of Christ can disclose and communi-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND ‘THE WORD

83

cate the message of the Bible. There was no thought in - their minds of framing a rational theory to support the authority of Scripture; rather, their meaning was that

the ground of the authority of Scripture belongs within the area of its content and can be discovered only in an act of faith and prayer. It was the pressure of continuing controversy with Rome, as has been already mentioned, that

\led the successors of the Reformers to give their doctrine ‘of the witness of the Holy Spirit the more concrete and rational form of a theory of inspiration. The great strength of the Roman position rested in its claims, which were alleged to be historically verifiable, to direct divine insti-

tution and divinely guaranteed immunity from error. The ancient theory of inspiration was invoked, because it seemed to lend to Scripture a superior title to precisely these two things: the conception of the human writers as passive instruments in the hands of the Spirit gave to Scripture the virtual status of a divine holograph and imj parted a divine sanction to its every word. The only real innovation that was madeby the theologians of the postReformation era (apart from their elaborate, scholastic analyses of the act of inspiration) was theequation | verbal inspiredness with verbal inerrancy. This notion has often beenregarded as essence of inspiration, and as

such it has figured prominently in modern controversy; yetit is, in fact, a product — characteristic product — of the seventeenth century, derived in part from the legalistic temperof the age andin part from the desire to outdo the

Roman claims for the Church. These claims, thoughlofty,

were seriously weakened by the abundant historical records of the Church’s errancy, and could not compete with

those of a document, which, by virtue of its origin, pos-

sessed the authority of divine law in its minutestparticular.

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i While the collapse of the “ orthodox” theory of inspiration came about primarily through the advent of literary and historical criticism and the factual demonstration of the errancy of the Biblical writers, the real argument against it is to be found in the distorted conception of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit, which it implies. If

I attempt to pursue the root of the error in this direction,

it may help to point the way to a truer understanding of the meaning of the Spirit in the Word. Let me make three critical observations: 1. In their determination to assert the authority of Scripture over the Church, in opposition to the Roman doctrine, the theologians of the post-Reformation period were (unwittingly) led to set up a false antithesis between the

Scripture and the Church. The Roman doctrine, which

makesScripture (like tradition ) a divine instrument in the hands of the authoritative Church, derives a certain plausibility from thehistorical fact that the Church wasin existence before Scripture (at least the New Testament) and — that it was the Church which collected the writings of the New Testament and made them canonical. The inference drawn by some Romancontroversialists, that the authority

of Scripture is subordinate to the authority of the Church, presented no difficulty to the Reformers, since it was easy

to show that in the act of canonization the Church did not pretend to confer authority on Scripture, but, on the contrary, acknowledged the authority of Scripture over itself; 7° had the Church felt itself to be possessed of the

authority that the Romansclaim forit, it is difficult to see

why it should have felt any need to set up a, canon of

Scripture.” Nevertheless,it was a patent embarrassmentto

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the Reformers that the Church should play even a sub-

ordinate role in this matter, and they stroveto eliminateit

completely by establishing the authority of Scripture on a

ground with which the Church had nothing to do. The first step was taken by Calvin, as we saw; the real mean-

ing of his teaching is made plain in the Confession of La Rochelle, where it is expressly stated that the canonicity

of the canonical books is an immediate deliverance of the

Holy Spirit, independentof the historical judgment of the

Church.”? Now, the idea that a formal distinction like that of canonical and apocryphal can be derived from “the in-

terior witness and persuasion of the Holy Spirit ” without

regard to exterior data like the decision of the Church or the criteria which it took into account in reaching its de-

cision, must be dismissed as a pious delusion. Can it be

seriously maintained that the inner witness of the Spirit is

sufficient to inform us (for example) that the book of The Proverbsis of divine origin and therefore to be received as authoritative, while the book of The Wisdom of Solomon, “not being of divine inspiration” is “of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or

made use of, than other human writings “? ** Moreover,

the underlying assumption that the testimony of the Spirit will coincide with the ecclesiastical definition of the canon and render it superfluous is not borne out by éxperience. The truth is, as is well known, that those who rely exclusively on the inner witness of the Spirit have frequently found themselves in conflict with the ecclesiastical def-

inition. In addition to Luther, whose discriminatory atti-

tude to the canonical New Testament is well known, the

case of Bunyan may be mentioned. Having found great -

comfort in the text, “Look at the generations of old, and

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see; did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded? ” he sought for it in canonical Scripture, but in vain. Later,

he writes, “ Casting my eye upon the Apocrypha books, I found it in Ecclesiasticus, chapter two, verse ten. This at

first did somewhat daunt me, because it was not in those

texts that wecall holy and canonical: yet as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it. And I bless God for that word, for it was good to me. That word doth still ofttimes shine before my face.” * There was here an evident failure to realize that while the authority of canonical Scripture is not conferred upon it by the Church,it is inseparably bound up with thetestimony of the Church. The definition of the canon was, in the last analysis, an act of faith on the part of the Church,

| and canonical authority has meaning only in relation to ‘ the faith of the Church. In other words, ScriptureisessenReformers tended to forget when they asserted the authority of Scripture over the Church in opposition to the Roman Catholic doctrine which set Scripture under the Church. They did, indeed, recognize it when they approachedit from the other side — they defined the Church as the sphere in which Scripture is operative; i.e., it is Scripture that makes the Church the Church. They did not take sufficient account of the complementary truth that it is in the Church that Scripture is Scripture. By their unnatural severance of the authority of Scripture from its natural context in the faith of the Church and their at_ tempt to make it dependent exclusively on the inner wit; ness of the Spirit, they laid the foundation for the subsequent development of a distorted conception of the

' operation of the Spirit and, in consequence, a distorted

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| conception of the nature and scope of Scripture. 2. The refusal to accept the historical testimony of the

Church’s faith as the external correlate or counterpart of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit left the latter vul-

nerable to the charge of subjectivism, and it was to escape this charge that appeal was made to the quality of Scrip-

ture itself, which was considered to furnish objective evi-

dence of its having been divinely inspired. But the equa-

tion of inspiration with inerrancy reflects a conception of spirit that belongs to the mantic cults of ancient Greece rather than to the faith of the New Testament.” Thespirit whose operation in the Biblical writers was analyzed into the impulsus ad scribendum, the suggestio rerum, and the suggestio verborum,is the spirit of the Delphic oracle, not

the Spirit of Christ. There was in this a manifest failure to practice that

“ discrimination of spirits,” on which the New Testament

lays emphasis (I Cor. 12:10), and for which it offers cer-

tain tests (John 15:26; I Cor. 12:3; I John 4:1 4.). Two of

these may be applied. (a) If it be accepted as the primary test that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that bears witness to Christ and to the truth that came by him, the orthodox doctrine of inspiration posits aspirit with a much wider range of operation.When it was taught, as the theory required, that every single matter in Scripture, even though it lay within the natural knowledge of the writer, was

written “at the special suggestion, inspiration, and dictation of the Holy Spirit ” (Quenstedt); when it was taught (to give the classic example) that Paul wrote to Timothy about the cloak he left at Troas (II Tim. 4:13), not because he remembered it, but because he was divinely inspired to do so, not even the most rigid advocates of the

theory could maintain that such matters came within the

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scope of the purposeassigned to Scripture in the selfsame epistle, viz., that of “instructing us for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 3:15). The theory made inspiration much more extensive than revelation, as some of its exponents did not hesitate to acknowledge, unaware that by so doing they werein effect confessing to having invoked a conception of spirit which could not, except in

an arbitrary way, be identified with the Spirit of the Father and the Son. (b) It is pertinent to ask whether the mode of operation ascribed to the Spirit in the theory does not cast suspicion upon its identity with the Spirit of Christ. Does the experience of the “inspired” writers not show a closer affinity with possession by evil spirits? The authors of the orthodox theory of inspiration, like their precursors in the Early Church, appear to have proceeded on the assumption that possession by spirits, both good and evil, conforms to the same pattern. But it is just this

assumption that Paul is mainly concerned to refute in his long discussion of “ spirituals ” in I Corinthians. He introduces the theme by pointing a contrast between pagan and Christian conceptions of spirituality: as pagans, he

reminds them, they were victims of an involuntary seduction or a blind infatuation; they had now to learn that the

presenceof the Spirit of Christ is marked by an articulate confession of faith in him (ch. 12:1-3). The grave threat to the integrity of the faith which Paul evidently saw in the introduction of pagan notions of spirituality into the Christian Church has been recognized more than once on its recurrence in history. It was not recognized that the inspiration ascribed to the Biblical writers in the orthodox theory belongs to the pagan rather than to the Christian type of experience. | 3. The conception of spirit and spiritual operation im-

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plied in the theory of inspiration ishard to reconcile with _ the personality of the Holy Spirit,The personality of the Holy Spirit is an essential element of Trinitarian doctrine: but there was nothing very personal about the activity of the Spirit (as it was conceived) in the Biblical writers —it came, in fact, to be generally characterized as mechanical — nor about the faith associated with it, which

involved acceptance of a large assortmentof propositional statements. The real ground of the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit is the relation of the Spirit to Christ. The Spirit is another (allos) than Christ; yet the presence (as parakletos) of the Spirit is not other than the presence of Christ (John 14:16); for it is precisely the function of the Spirit to re-present Christ (John 16:14), and it is the living Christ himself who is present in the Spirit (John 14:18). There is no such thing as an experience of the presence of the Spirit distinct from the presence of Christ; ** the Christian experience is an experience

of the presence of Christ in the Spirit, and as suchit is a

personal experience, an encounter with One whois Kyrios. The original intention of the Reformers’ doctrine of the

testimony of the Holy Spirit was toaffirmthatChristian _ faith means nothing less than personal experience ofthe

living Christ, and that it is the function of Scripture to serve as means to that end. In other words, they taught,

as they had found, that the written testimony of prophets and apostles to Christ can really lead men beyond itself to an encounter with Christ himself, and they could account

for this power only by ascribing it to the Spirit of the living Christ, confirming the testimony of the Word in men’s hearts. But when Calvin madethe testimony of the Spirit in the Word to Christ contingent on a testimony of the Spirit te the Word, ie., to its divine authorship, he ob-

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-scured the essentially personal character of faith and opened the door to the subsequent development of the theory of inspiration, in which the obscurity becametotal. The main insight of the Reformation was that faith is a

personal relation with Godin Christ through the Holy Spirit, and that it is the function of Church, Bible, sacra-

ments, etc., to serve as means to this end. Whenever any of these mediating factors is elevated to a position that obscures the end it serves, whenever it interposes itself

between faith and its true object, faith becomes de-

personalized, and it is time to protest. The Reformers

were able to break through the Roman Catholic front

at the point of the Word, which they found the most

potent weapon againstall false absolutes. The subsequent development of the theory of inspiration meant the be-

trayal of the Reformation precisely at the point ofits de-

_ cisive break-through and a relapse into the obtrusion of

impersonal authorities against which its basic protest had been directed.

IV What, then, in the light of these critical observations, are we to say of the positive significance of the doctrine of the Spirit in the Word? I believe it will be sufficient to say that in order to understand this doctrine aright,it is essential to keep two things in view, which I would describe summarily as content and context. For the Reformers, as we have seen, the testimony_of the Holy Spirit was related primarily to the efficacy of the

Word, ie., to the power of its content to communicate.

itself as living reality to the hearer or reader. They were notinterested in the form in which this content was to be

found in Scripture, because its power to communicate it-

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selfproved it to-be essentially incommensurable with any

forfn. When,for example, in Luther’s experience the word

of justification by faith in Rom. 1:17 came alive, so to speak, and leaped from the printed page and seized him as Jacob was seized by that ghostly wrestler at the ford Jabbok, it was not of the verbal inerrancy of the text or the inspiration ofits writer or even of its divine origin that he thought, but of the power of the Spirit, through this word, to communicate the gospel of Christ to him effectually. It was to the experience of readers of the Bible rather than to that of its writers that the witness of the

Spirit was related. It was not, however, the intensity or vitality of the experience that registered the presence of the Spirit. This is the romantic misunderstanding to which some have been led in reaction against mechanical theories of inspiration. Its most famous statement was given by Coleridge:

“ Whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit.” * It is present also in the thought of some more recent theologians who seek to ground the inspiration of Scripture on the “appeal it makes to the heart and conscience.” ”* There is, of course, an element of truth in this position. It is certain that the witness of the Holy Spirit is not likely to be known without such a warming of the heart. But when the whole case is madeto rest on the quality of the experience; when, for example, it is said that “The Bible is inspired because it is inspiring,” *° we are in danger of subjectivism, because

we have no reason why the experience that comes through reading the Bible should be ascribed to the Holy Spirit any more than otherinspiring experiences. The appeal of Scripture should not be confused with the emotional quality of the experience which it evokes; it is its specific

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content that is the decisive factor.”

If we ask whatprecisely the appeal of Scripture is, the

New Testament leaves us in no doubt of the answer. The appeal of Scripture is the appeal of its testimony to Jesus Christ and the gospel of God which is the finished work of his incarnatelife. The author of the Fourth Gospel speaks for all the writers of Scripture when he says of his own work; “These are written, that ye might believe that

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye

might have life through his name ” (John 20:31). In other

words, the Scriptures were not written to draw attention to themselves, and their appeal does not arise from any

property in themselves. Their appeal proceeds from Him to whom they bear witness, and they are only the medium

or vehicle of it, as Paul says of the preaching of the | apostles; “ We are ambassadors for Christ, God makinghis appeal through us” (II Cor. 5:20). To use a paradox, the content of Scripture is not (and cannot) be “contained” in Scripture. Scripture stands to its “ content ” in the relation of testimony to a reality that transcendsitself. This must be kept in view if the other aspects of Scripture are to be seen in their true perspec-

tive. Thus Scripture also presents the aspect of a record of facts, and since its testimony is conveyed through this record,it is easy to suppose that the right response to the

testimony consists in acceptance of the record. How,it is

asked, could anything be conveyed to us through Scripture at all—or anything except airy fancies — unless the veracity of the record could be relied on? Clearly thereis point to the question. If the veracity of the record could be seriously impugned — if, to give the stock example, it could be proved that Jesus never lived and that the Gospel records of his life were completely fictitious, that would

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be an end of the whole matter. But, on the other hand, if

the veracity of the record is insisted on as a condition (or consequence} of the validity of the reality to which it bears testimony, this is to forget that this reality is incommensurable with the most perfect record that could be

imagined. It is this incommensurability which the author of the Fourth Gospel expresses when he writes: “There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the worlditself

could not contain the books that would be written” ( John 21:25). And it was the converseofit that Kierkegaard had in mind when he suggested that the truth would stand even if the record were reduced to minimal proportions: “If the contemporary generation had left behind them nothing but the words, ‘We have believed that in such

and such a year God appeared among us in the humble figure of a servant, that he lived and taught in our community, andfinally died,’ it would be more than enough.” ™

This, of course, is an extreme statement, but it is an ex‘treme statement of the truth that the gospel, to which

Scripture bears testimony, is not authenticated by the nature and extent of the record in which the testimony is

presented. “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).

Much of the difficulty that is felt in this matter arises from failure to consider Scripture in its context. The problem of inspiration has often been discussed as if Scripture were the only means through which the gospel is conveyed, and as if it existed in a vacuum. If we makethis as-

sumption, the argument that the veracity of the record is a

necessary condition, or implicate, of the validity of the testimony, carries considerable force. But the assumption is false; for Scripture does not stand alone. Despite the

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° sola Scriptura of Luther and the orthodox doctrine of the

sufficiency of Scripture (both of which had their valid meaning ), Scriptura has never been sola, nor has it ever been treated as sufficient. The meansof grace, as the Westminster Standards attest, are the Word, sacraments, and ‘prayer. If this does not mean that the Word, or either of the others by itself, is less than sufficient to convey the fullness of the gospel, I do not know what it can mean. But eyen if we confine our attention to Scripture alone,it

must be rememberedthat Scripture has always been what

, [

it is in the Church, and its testimony has always been accompanied by the testimony of the Church. Therelation ;between them is twofold: The testimony of the Church is a response to the testimony of Scripture, which is prior

to it; in the testimony of the Church the testimony of Scripture is heard and repeated. Butit is also through the

~ testimony of the Church that the testimony of Scripture

_is brought out. The thought that it can cometo a living, personal relation with the reality attested in Scripture would not (normally) suggest itself to the reader apart from the testimony of the Church'sfaith. This is not to say that it is the Church that makes the Word effectual. The

Word becomes effectual by the testimony of the Holy Spirit — but it is only within the context of the Church’s faith thatits efficacy is known.

It was necessary at the Reformation to assert the doctrine of the Spirit in the Word in opposition to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Spirit in the Church, but the reason for this was, paradoxically, that there can be no real opposition between them; for the Spirit is in the Church

only when it is a Church of the Word, and the Spirit is in

the Word only whenit is the Word in the Church.It is the

Church that is defined as the communion ofthe Holy

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Spirit. The Reformers had no wish to deny this. Their intention was merely to emphasize that the Church truly participates in the Holy Spirit when, through the testi-

mony of the Word,it is united in faith and obedience to its Lord. Luther said the Word is the cradle in which Christ lies; we may also say that the Church is the nursery in which the cradle lies. To isolate the doctrine of the Spirit in the Word from its context in the faith of the Church is to put asunder what Godhasjoined together. To sum up, the testimony of the Spirit in the Wordis registered, not in any properties of the Scriptural record, but where the Church receives the testimony of the Word and repeats it in the testimony of its own faith. It occurs,

so to speak, at the point where the testimony of Scripture and the testimony of the Church converge. But this is a point outside and above themselves, a point that they can reach only by overreaching themselves. This point is the presence of the living Lord in the power of his finished work. The testimony of Scripture and the testimony of the Church are instrumental to it; but they cannot effect it — least of all by the advancementof exalted claims on behalf of either of them. The doctrine of the testimony of the

Holy Spirit makes all such claims redundant; for it means that, despite. the frailty and fallibility of the Church, de-

spite the errancy of Scripture, nevertheless the living Lord makes himself known to us through their testimony. They are_means grace; but the grace is that of the Lord Jesus Christ, which proceeds from the love of God and is im-

parted to us in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

V The Holy Spire and the Human Spirit he problem of the relation between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit is one that has been curiously neglected in the main stream of Christian theology. Throughout the greater part of its history, Christian theology has been chiefly concerned with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit “who proceeds from the Father

and the Son,” and in this it has been faithful to the em-

phasis of the New Testament; it has shown little interest

in the question how this Spirit is related in essence and operation to the spirit that is in man, and in this too it has followed the example of the New Testament. Yet the New Testament recognizes that man is a being endowed with spirit, and the question was bound to arise (if only because they bear the same name) how thedivine Spiritis related to the human. I The question first arose when the Christian faith spread beyondthe confines of Judaism and entered the world of Greek, culture, where it encountered a lofty view of the significance and capacity of the humanspirit (if not always under that name). The conception of spirit, which may be described as one of the most characteristic products of the Greek genius, is discernible in germ in the thought of Heraclitus * andreceivesits classical expression in Plato. As the principle of man’s self-transcendence, or 96

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awareness of transcendent reality, spirit manifests itself

in the form of longing or aspiration, that eros, or love of

the perfect and heavenly beauty, which is described in Plato's Symposium. The prevalence of this type of thought seemed to present an ideal opportunity for a theology of correlation, and despite protests by isolated figures, like Tertullian, who held that there could be no traffic between

Athens and Jerusalem, the theologians of the Early Church, for the most part, sought to come to terms with

pagan philosophy by interpreting the eros of the human spirit as an aspiration after that fulfillment which is real-

ized in the gift of the divine Spirit. The principal exponent of this approach in the ancient Church was, of course, Augustine, for whom the unrestful striving which

he found at the core of existence is the index of an ontological orientation of the creature toward the Creator: “Thou has madeusfor thyself, and our hearts are restless

till they find their rest in thee”;* and this implies the

presence in man of a principle or capacity for self-tran-

scendence: “Man was so created that by means of that in him which transcends ( praecellit ) he should attain to that which transcends all things, that is the true and best and only God.” * This theology ofcorrelation cameto its full flower in medieval Scholasticism, where the doctrine. of

man was dominated by the motif of aspiration. To Aquinas, for example, the essenceof all intelligent creatures is their

tendencytoseek their beatitude and chief end in God, and though he does not do so,it is natural to ascribe the desire

of the finite for the infinite to the human spirit‘The appeal of this type of correlation theology is obvious, and its persistence, both in Roman Catholicism and elsewhere, is easy to understand.° Echoesof it are to be heard even in the young Luther; in his Exposition of the Magnificat

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

(1521 ),'Luther describes the spirit as “the highest,deepest, noblest. part of man, by which heis able to grasp-incomprehensible, invisible, and eternalthings.”°

It soon cameto be felt, however, that such a view could not be held in conjunction with the main emphasis of the Reformation. Thesufficiency of grace aloneleft no need of

correlation with anything on the part of man, but implied rather his total incapacity. Faith in the Holy Spirit, according to Luther’s famous words in his Smaller Catechism,

means: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or powerbelieve in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and preserved mein the

true faith.” ’ Here no mention is made of the human spirit,

andits role, if any could be assigned to it, would be merely to form the area or sphere in which the Holy Spirit comes

to operate, as, indeed, Luther suggests in the sequel to the

passage cited above fromthe Exposition of the Magnificat: The spirit, he says, unlike the soul which is illumined by the light of reason, has no light of its own; it is a dark room, like the holy of holies in the Temple, “ where God dwells in the darkness of faith, without_light.” * But it is

difficult to see why this conception should bear the name of spirit, since it is entirely passive and lacking in the dynamic movement that is characteristic of spirit. The

‘Reformers rapidly lost interest in the human spirit alto-

gether, and for an obvious reason: When thefull force of

their new apprehension of the gospel was deployed theologically, it seemed to obliterate the spirit of man and reduce him tothe level of an inanimate object like a stone or a tree.° Calvin recognized the significance of the human spirit and sought to give it a place in his thought. In the opening chapters of the Institutes, he seems to be laying

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

~ go

the foundation for a theology of correlation. Calvin saw

in the existence (and persistence ) of idolatry a proof that

some sense of deity is inscribed on every human heart. Man'strue felicity and the end for which he is born and lives is the knowledge of God: “thus the chiefoperation of the soul is to aspire afterit.” ° But it soon becomesclear | that this is predicable only of unfallen man;in fallen, sinful man this aspiration of the spirit has become perverted and corrupted, and when manis broughtto the real know!edge of God through his Word andSpirit, the human spirit

plays nosignificant part. The knowledge of God is madeto

depend so exclusively on the downreach of the divine Spirit that any movement of upreach on thepart of the humanspirit can be construed only as an attempt to bypass it.The consequence was that the spirit of man was not brought into a positive relation with the Spirit of God in faith; and man was to all intents and purposes

“ de-spirited.” In theological anthropology the preference

was decidedly for dichotomy, and spirit received only a grudging recognition as an aspect or faculty of the soul; Calvin never speaksof the spirit of man, but alwaysof the soul or mind, except where he is under exegetical necessity, as in I Cor. 2:11. His comment on that passage is: ~ Observe that here the spirit of man is taken for the soul in which the intellectual power, as theycall it, resides.”

But this spirit is spirit in name only,for it lacks the distinctive movement of spirit, viz., aspiration: “ Man,” says Calvin, “is so enslaved by sin as to be of his own nature

incapable of an effort, or even an aspiration, toward that which is good.” ** Human aspiration, accordingly, played no part in the encounter with divine grace; the role of the

human spirit in this encounter is one of complete passivity; for man is spiritually dead, until he is quickened

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and renewed bythe Holy Spirit.** The Reformers felt themselves forced to this conclusion (to the difficulties of which they were not entirely insensitive ) by their understanding of the gospel. The sovereignty and sufficiency of grace left no room for human effort or even for human aspiration. The Agape motif dominated the picture so completely, that eros was eliminated altogether. Such was the classical pattern of the Lutheran and Reformed theologies, and it is vigorously upheld in some of their contemporary expressions. Someone has put it in epigrammatic form: “God is everything; man is nothing.”

And thoughthis is, no doubt, a caricature, like most epigrams, at least no one needs to ask whatit is a caricature of. But, smile at it as we may, how can we avoid it if we

follow the logic of the gospel? If we start out from the initiative of God, the sufficiency of grace, the exclusiveness

of Agape-love, it seems difficult to resist the conclusion that man’s part in the affair is one of sheerpassivity.

_

II

The Church has wrestled with this problem under different forms at different times in its history. The controversy between Augustine andPelagius in thefifth century, the struggle between Calvinists and Arminians in the seventeenth century, the disputes of recent decades over

the questions of natural theology and the image of God, all.

revolve around the same problem, viz., What role, if any, can be assigned to man in the encounter with the gospel

that will not conflict with the sovereignty of grace and at the same time conserve man’s essential humanity? Itis this

same problem that we pose, when we ask, Whatis the re-

lation between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man?

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Andit seems to me that in approaching the problem from

this angle, and in opening up this somewhat neglected

aspect of it, we may hope to avoid the impasse in which discussion of the problem in its traditional formsis all too likely to end.

The theology of the Reformation, as I have said, implies

the virtual elimination of the human spirit as a factor in man's encounter with the gospel. There are three grounds, it seems to me, on which this position is open to question: They may be described as philosophical, exegetical, and theological, respectively, 1. If it be argued that philosophical objections are incompetent in a theological court, the answer is that theology and philosophy have a common pointof interest in

the nature of man, and a radical contradiction between them at this point would be intolerable. Indeed, this is

pretty much what happened. Thetheological conception of a condition in which man is “altogether passive” * and the human spiritplays no active part, was found, when it

was examined philosophically and psychologically, to be

quiteuntenable. Man cannot be deprived of activespirit

without ceasing to benian. The development of the phi-losophy of spirit in post-Kantian idealism, originating in Germany, may be interpreted historically as a revolt against the suppression of the spirit in Protestant theology; for it was in its initial intention an affirmation, or reaffirmation, of the human spirit. This was sometimes

obscured behind the metaphysical constructions erected upon it, according to which the spirit in man was interpreted as an immanence of the Holy Spirit, as in Fichte, who describes it as “an affinity with the supersensible world which is present in man naturally and independently of the teaching of Jesus,” ** or as a moment in the

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self-realization of the absolutespirit, as in Hegel. It comes out more clearly in’ the phenomenological approach of recent thinkers like Max Scheler, for whom spirit is the source of man’s unique ability “to elevate himself above

himself as a living being and, as it were, from a center

beyond the spatiotemporal world, to make everything, including himself, an object of his knowledge.” ** As the capacity for self-transcendence, the impulse to reach up to and aspire after the universal and the eternal, spirit is seen as the distinctive feature of man; it is that which © distinguishes him from all other creatures; it is the secret

of that creativity which he aloneof all intelligent beings : has evinced.” . . » unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man.”

The significance of this conception of spirit for the Christian understanding of man was first perceived by Kierkegaard, and it is doubtless to his influence that we may ascribe its current adoption in Christiananthropol-

ogyThe conceptof_spiritplays a decisive part_in the

es ————

thought of Niebuhr, for whom it signifies that, while man

is a child of nature, he also “ stands outside nature, life,

himself, his reason, and the world.” ** As such,spirit:isthe distinctive characteristic of man and the secret both ofhis grandeur andof his misery. It stands for the fact, as it has

been put by another writer,’ that man is permanently maladjusted to his environment, and is impelled to reach

out to the transcendent. “The essential homelessness of the human spirit is the ground ofall religion; for the self which stands outside itself and the world cannot find the meaningoflife in itself or the world.” * In similar terms, ‘Emil Brunner‘finds the essence of spirit in its relation to

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“ somethingbeyondexisting sphere,” to that which is

meaningful, valid, normative; “ spirit, in contradisti.._.ion

from that which is merely functional and psychical, can only beunderstood as something ‘transcending the ordinary level, aspiring alter-something ‘beyondtheself,’ an original actuality.” *\Brunnercontendsthatthe true tran-

scendence of the human spirit can be understood only

“from above,” i.e., from its relation to the divine Spirit, and this is true, but it does not alter the fact that the element of transcendence as such discloses itself to a view of spirit “from below ”; and one specific aspectofit, viz.,

therelation of spirit to transcendent meaning, has been present in the tradition of idealistic philosophy from Plato. Professor George F. Thomas gives a prominent place to this factor in his phenomenological analysis of spirit:

“ The spiritual activity of an individual is that which is directed towards universal truth andvalue.It is by his identification of himself with the universal that a person enters the spiritual life. The reason for this lies in that capacity for selftranscendence ’ whichis the glory of mind. The most profound thing in Plato’s theory of love is his statement that it indicates at once a defect of being on the part of the soul and an aspiration to overcomethat defect by seeking to possess the perfection it lacks, Similarly the Scholastics hold that, though the humansoul is finite, it has an aspiration that can befilled with

nothing short of the infinite. Spirit involves a kind of union of the individual with the universal.” 2

There can, of course, be no question of an equation of

Platonism and Christianity. As Thomas points out, decisive consequences follow from the fact that “in Plato’s theory the universal is impersonal and abstract, whereas in the Christian theory it is personal and concrete.”Yetit remains true, both appear to be at one in a view of “the

spirit of man that goeth upward ” (Eccl. 3:21).

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2. If contemporary Christian anthropology shows an affinity with, and ahospitable attitude toward, the conception of spirit that was recovered by idealistic philosophy, it may well be because of a feeling that this conception does fuller justice to the Biblical conception of spirit

than the scheme of orthodox soteriology accordedto it. While orthodoxy,a we have seen, tended to suggest that the spirit of man is a negligible factor prior to his encounter with the gospel and the quickening influence of the Spirit of grace, dispassionate exegetical study would seem to indicate that the Bible attaches considerable importance to the fact that man as God’s creatureis a being endowed with spirit. At the most primitive level, spirit was conceived as the

breath of life and was not distinguished from the soul.

This distinction appearslater, but it was never so sharply drawn as in Greek thought; for since the very life of man,

like that of all creatures, derives from God and is con-

tinually dependent upon him, there was no room for a concept of the soul as a purely immanentprinciple oflife. Life had always a transcendent, Godward reference. When the concept ofspirit came to be more clearly distinguished

from that of soul, it was to express the consciousness of man’s relation to God rather than the fact. J think Niebuhr.|

overstresses the distinction in a Greek direction when he says that ruach gradually became “the more specific designation of man’s organ of relation to God, in distinction to nephesh which achieves a connotation identical with ‘soul’ or psyche, or the life principle in man”; 78 this is not borne out by the evidence of the Old Testa-

ment, which seems rather to support the view that the

essential differentia of ruach is consciousness. Eichrodt

describes ruach as “the organ of mental life, the cen ter of

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105

the thoughts, purposes and moods ” *4; like all tha t is in man, it is derived from God (Job 82:8), but it is not intrinsically or exclusively directed toward God. Bultmann’s analysis of the meaning of pneuma in the Pauline anthropology yields much the sameresult; he finds that whenit denotes a special aspect of man (which is not always the case), it is the conscious or cognitive aspect, correspond-

ing to the nous of Greek psychology,and in some places

it approximates to the modern conception of self-consciousness.”*

This, however, does not reduce spirit to a purely im-

manental conception orstrip it of its transcendent reference. On the contrary, it is precisely the spirit that fur-

nishes the key to the Biblical understanding of man’s

self-transcendence; it is spirit that keeps the relation_be-

tween God and man essentially free and personal. This may best be seen if we consider two apparently contradictory emphases in the Biblical delineation of the relation. On the one hand, there is, as we have already noticed, a strong emphasis on the dependence of man’slife (and of

all life) on the divine Spirit. This is often expressed in terms that suggest that the Spirit of God is immanent in man astheprinciple of his life, and such language has led sometheologians to deny the existence of a distinct humanspirit. It is a question, however, whether this position,

which stresses the absolute dependence of man on God, does not tend to conflict with the other Biblical emphasis on the discontinuity of man and God. It is true, defenders of the dichotomous position have argued that to admit a

created spirit in addition to the Creator Spirit would be

to posit an element common to God and man and so to blur the radical distinction between them. But this danger seems as likely to arise from the view of an immanence of

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

the Spirit of God in man, which could be misused to form

a pantheistic or mystical cosmology in which the participation of the creatures in the divine Spirit would serve as basis for a natural unity of the Creator and the creature.

In the Old Testament, as Eichrodt points out, the idea of

the Spirit is employed precisely to guard against this danger, as well as to stress the absolute dependence of the creature on the Creator, whois free at any moment to revoke the gracious gift of his Spirit. Eichrodt refers to the story of Gen. 6:14, where the true relation of man to God is set in dramatic contrast to the mythological conception of a race of semi-divine beings: “In contrast to

heathen thought, with its numerous traditions of races of

heroes, the same material is employed here to dgmonstrate in an unmistakable manner the unbridgeable gulf which separates the creature from the eternal God.” ”* It is this paradoxical combination of emphasesthat provides the key to the essential meaning ofspirit in Scrip-

ture, and explains the eventual recognition of the human

spirit in Biblical thought. While the powerful sense of the dependenceof all creaturely existence on God sometimes led to the use of language that equated vitality with direct participation in the divine Spirit and left no room for a

humanspirit, it cameto be realized that man’s unique

ability to acknowledge his relation to the divine Spirit implies his ability to encounter spirit in its own medium, so to speak, and this is intelligible only in terms of his

endowment with created spirit. Created spirit is not to be thought of as a fragment of the Spirit of God or of some continuous “élement in which God and man participate

together, but rather as the image ofthe divine Spirit; ifwe

were to draw a parallel between the two creation narra-_ tives in Genesis, the inbreathing of the divine breathor a:f

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107

Spirit in Gen. 2:7 (J) would correspond to the creation of man in the divine imagein Gen. 1:27 (P).2" The point is

that a distinction must be observed between man’s existential dependence on God, which he shares with all living

creatures and whichapplies to him as an “ ensouled body,”

and man’s personal relation to God, which can berealized

onlyat the level of spirit. The difference is that man’s creaturely dependence on God is inherent in the structure of

his being; his relation to Godat the level of spirit involves his free and conscious act. At the same time, however,

the freedom of the spirit in man must not be separated

from the structure of the soul; forit is only in the light of

the relation between them that we can understand the nature of creaturely freedom, which is always structured freedom. Thatis to say, thespirit of man, as the spiritof the creature whom God created for himself, has the true goal ofits aspiration in God;yet, as spirit is free, its direction to God appears, in a phenomenologicalview,as only one possibility. As Bultmann says, with reference to the Pauline doctrine: “The goal of the direction is not determined in the ontological structure of being directed;

but this structure (which is, of course, for Paul a gift of the Creator of life) yields the possibility of a choice of goals, a decision for good or evil, for or against God.” * In _ other words, man’s relation to God, which corresponds to

ized only by the free act of the human spirit. Thus the

humanspirit is merely the index of man’s sélf-transcendence, i.e., his ability to elevate himself above himself (as

Scheler puts it); but this does not of itself relate him to God -- it may lead him to.an “encounter with nothingness.” ”° Yet the human spirit is the organ of his encounter

with theSpiritof God. This appears to be the teaching of

*

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

P aul, as we find it in his most extended treatmentof the

_ theme in I Cor., ch’ 2. The presence of a human spirit in man does notof itself relate him to the Spirit of God; for the Spirit of God is only to be received as his gift. Yet the analogy drawn between the humanspirit as the capacity for self-transcendence (in the form of self-knowledge) and the divine Spirit seems to indicate that the receiving of the gift presupposes this capacity. The man whois in-

capableof receiving and discerningthe things of the Spirit

of God, and whom Paul describes as the “ natural ” man

(psychikos ), is not to be thought of as one who is constitutionally devoid of this capacity but rather as one who by his misuse of the freedom of the spirit has forfeited it; for the alternative to receiving the Spirit of God is not complete unspirituality, but to receive thespirit the-world——_ For Paul it is with our spirit that the Spirit of God bears

witness.

3. The theological question, which remains to be considered, is whether we can concede to the human spirit

that significance which both philosophical and exegetical considerations seem to demand without coming into collision with the great Protestant and evangelical principle of the sovereignty of grace. The question is thrust upon us in a challenging way by Karl Barth, who has reaffirmed the distinctive emphasis of the Reformers and drawn the consequences with ruthless logic. As we saw in an earlier connection, Barth interprets the filiogue as precluding not only the notion of a Spirit which proceeds from the Father alone, and which would furnish the basis of a re-

lation between God and man apart from Christ, but also

the conception of a created spirit in man. The relation of man to Godis established solely and exclusively by the downreachof the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son, i.e., the Spirit who “makes us partakers of the

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redemption purchased by Christ.” There is no other rela-

tion between God and man apart from this, and in this

relation there is no place for the upward reachof a spirit of man. The question we haveto ask is whethersola gratia necessarily entails these two negative consequences. It may readily be granted that there is no relation be-

tween man and God, in the sense of true knowledge of God and fellowship with God, except in man’s personal

encounter with God in Christ. There is no other way in which we can apprehend God except as he gives himself to us through Christ in the Holy Spirit. But doesit follow that, apart from this spiritual relation, God and man stand

completely unrelated to each other? Barth holds that the sovereign sufficiency of the divine act of grace is im-

pugned, should a relation between them be posited in the

order of being. His polemic against the analogia entis is based on the charge that in it “the personal act in which God turns to man disappears in a relation which subsists between them all the time.” ** The sovereignty of grace may seem to befirmly assured in this way, but surely at an excessive cost. (a) If no relation subsists between God and

man all the time,if no ontological or structural relation to the Creator is implicit in man’s creatureliness as such, the

concept of “creature” would seem to be evacuated ofall real meaning. And (b), if there is no relation between the Creator and the creation subsisting all the time, but only the relation established by the act of grace, it becomes

difficult to maintain the existence of the creation as a reality over against God. In his treatment of the doctrine of creation, Barth resolves the Berkeleian doubt as to the

existence of the world by merging it in its salvation: esse est salvari.\ The sovereignty of grace has become totalitarianismn.

Now with regard to the question of the spirit of man,

110

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOCY

Barth does not deny that man hasspirit, but, as we have already seen, he equates the spirit of man with the fact that the Spirit of God reaches out toward him. Man is essentially the recipient of spirit, but in no sense the bearer or possessor. The motive again is clear; Barth is concerned, as the Reformers were, to eliminate anything that would suggest that man is capable of making any contribution whatsoever from his side to the divine act of saving grace. Thus the spiritual movement by which the relation between God and manis effected is a movement in one direction exclusively; it consists in the downward reach of the Spirit of God, and there is no place whatsoever for an upward reach of the spirit of man.” Barth will allow no kind of rapprochement between revelation and religion conceived as a movement of the human spirit, not even when religion is interpreted “as the hand which is stretched out to God and whichis then filled by him in his revelation.” * He will have no “ correlation-theology ” in any form,™ and he carries his opposition to the point of refusing even to allow a “ proper anthropology ” *; anthropology is merged in Christology, for man is so utterly dependent on divine grace, not only for his salvation but for his being, that no theological view of him is possible outside this context.** The question that immediately suggests itself here is this: How can human freedom survive in such a situation?

Barth’s doctrine issues in a kind of universalism which:it is hard to reconcile with the reality of human freedom. The decisions of human freedom are in the last analysis overruled by the sovereign decision of divine grace. This has always been thedifficulty where sola gratia has been affirmed in the sense of the Reformers; Luther’s doctrine

of the unfreedom of the will and Calvin’s doctrine of the double decree were conclusions irresistibly demanded by

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111

the logic of grace, as they understood it. And anyone who

accepts their premises must needs accept their conclusions. But does sola gratia necessarily entail this consequence? E suggest that, if there be a fallacy here, it should be sought, not in the logic that links the conclusion with the premise (for that is irrefragable), butin the conception of grace that forms the premise of the argument. It was, of course, from Augustine primarily that the Reformers de-

rived their understanding of grace, and its undoubted

superiority to that of medieval Catholicism led them to assume that the Augustinian concept of grace is identical with that of the New Testament. Critical scrutiny of the

Augustinianconcept ofgracein the light of the NewTesta-

ment will show that this is farfrom beingthecase. What is grace? In the New Testament it is used as a comprehensive designation for the act of God in Christ.” Graceis that which “ came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17); alternatively, what is extended to men in the gospel can ‘ be summarily expressed as “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ” (II Cor. 8:9). In a word, grace is the meaning of the incarnation. Now Augustine was aware of this; when

he wrote about grace he was thinking of the act of God in Christ. But there is one essential element or feature of the incarnation that Augustine failed to incorporatein his

concept of grace; for the incarnation involves two elements, both of which mustfind expression in an adequate concept of grace. Thefirst is the element of condescension. Augustine saw this clearly, and it was uppermost in the minds of the Reformers, as it is in that of Karl Barth.** Grace means primarily thatGod, whom no man hasseen at anytime (John

1:18), because he dwells in “the high and holy place” (Isa. 57:15), in the light which no man can approach unto

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(I Tim. 6:16), has condescended, has stooped, has come

down to man, and Has established a relation between himself and man. This aspect of grace may be represented as a verticalline, because it expresses the fact that it is the grace of God, who thus comes down to accomplish his sovereign wil! on man and whothereby rendersall human efforts to “ climb the heavenly steeps ” and ascend to God redundant and futile. The condescension of the grace of God is clearly indispensable to the realization of his purpose with man. Avgustine, however, made themistake of equating indispensablewith irresistible, and he did this

because he failed to take account of the other element which is present in the grace of the incarnation, viz., the element ofaccommodation. For the heart of the gospelis

not only that “the only-begotten Son of God . . . of one

substance with the Father ... for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven,” but also thathe.“-was mademan”; ® “Christ Jesus . . . though he was in the form of God,” not only “emptied himself,” but was also “found in human form” (Phil. 2:5-8); the eternal Word,

who“ was in the beginning with God,” was not only “ com-

ing into the world,” but also “becameflesh and dwelt

among us” (John 1:1-14). Augustine saw very clearly that grace is the grace of God who condescends to our level; what he did not see is that precisely as-suchitis

the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom God confronts us as man, not just descending upon us from above, but. coming to meet us at our own level, accommodating himself to our condition.” This aspect of grace, which might be represented by a horizontal line, is the opposite of irresisti-

ble. It would be nearer the truth to say that its keynote is

(fonresistance. The incarnate Lord comes as the Son_ of man, whosemission and destiny it is to be delivered into the hands of man. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christdoes

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118

not override-man's freedom; it respects it, itengagesit to the full extent, it bows before it, because that is the only way in whicha real relation,ie., a personal relation be-

tween God and mancan be. realized. Unlessman’s free-

dom is engaged, the only relation that could be estab-

lished between them would beof the I-it order. According

to the Augustinian conception of grace, in which God

descends upon man like an irresistible force, man’s role is only that of an object; significantly enough, it invites

comparison with that of a stock or a stone. But this is a travesty of the incarnation, which means precisely that

God doesnot treat man in this impersonal way but accommodates himself to man by taking his form so as to

engage him as a free subject and bring him into a personal

relation with himself. For a personal relationship can be. effected only when man is approached as “thou,” ie, a

subject whose freedom is respected, The incarnation

means not only that God condescends to man, but that he respects him as man to such an extent that he accepts the definition of man and subsumes himself underit. If

anthropology were based in Christology, as Barth would

have it, the end term of the incarnation (“and was made

man”) would lack definition. It is the paradox of grace

that God, in descending to man, does notun-man him, as

we might expect, seeing that He is God; by choosing to become man, Heaffirms his manhood, He subjects Christology to anthropology. Nowitis fairly evident that the denial of a createdspirit in man, both in ancient and in modern theology, is bound

up with a one-sided, Augustinian conception of grace.

However spirit be conceived, whether it be as a partici-

pationiin God_(as it was in antiquity), or whetherit be as. a capacity for God, an affinity with God, an orientation toward God (as it is currently interpreted in Roman

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Catholic theology ),** or whether it be reduced to_a-mere “point of contact” for God (as it is by some Protestant-

_ theologians), even such a minimal conceptionseems to be

. incompatible with the Reformation emphasis on thesufficiency of grace alone. It is on this emphasis that the evangelical power ofthe gospel depends. But when we speak of the sufficiency of grace alone, we must be care-

ful not to equate it with the sufficiency of that one aspect

of grace, which is represented by the vertical line, and

lose sight of that other aspect which is represented by the

horizontal line. This is the mistake which has too often been made in evangelical theology; evangelical assurance

of the sufficiency of grace has been built on whatis, in

effect, the Catholic conception of grace — differing only

from the Catholic conception in that the descending line

of grace does notstop at the upwardlimit of human attain-

ment, but descends to the point at which man lies prostrate before it. But an assurance of grace which involves the virtual suppression of man is not really evangelical.

evangelical conception of grace, and that means the grace

of the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of the Wordincarnate,

the grace which notonly descends upon man vertically

from above, reducing him to the condition of a helpless

target, but which comes to meethim at his own level and engages him at the point of his freedom, which is his spirit.*: 42

—

There is no reason why the existence of a created spirit in man, as distinct from the immanenceof the Spirit of God in him, should be thought to conflict with the sufficiency of grace alone, if the nature of spirit and its activity be properly understood. It is the conception of spirit as the principle of a relation to God immanent in man, or as itself divine, which makes such a conflict in-

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

5)

evitable. Plainly this conception cannot be entertained in Christian thought; there can be no immanent principle of a relation to God in sinful man. But, while sin alienates

man from God, this does not mean that there is no spirit in man. Man remains a being endowed with createdspirit (for spirit is the distinctive mark of man, and withoutit he would not be man); but spirit in sinful man becomes the principle of his lost relation to God; for man’s relation to God is always a relation in freedom, and spirit is the

principle of freedom. In the order of creation manis a being destined for fellowship with God, and, since this is a relation to be realized in freedom, man, as God’s creature, is endowed with freedom in the form of created spirit. The image of God in man becomesintelligible when it is understood in this

sense, not as indicating some kind of affinity with God

inherent in man’s creaturely structure, but as a relation

freely willed by God andto be received by man in free-

dom.* Now, when this relation is realized in the free cor-

respondence of created with uncreated Spirit, the com-

munion between them is of such a nature that, while the human spirit is not displaced by the divine, it is so open

and receptive to the divine that it gladly yields place to it. In the experience which is described in the New Testa-

ment as the communion of the Holy Spirit, man’s spirit does notlose its distinctness; for “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God”

(Rom. 8:16); yet its own distinctness is that of which the

human spirit is least conscious, and the man whois in

communion with the Holy Spirit is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17; Eph. 5:18). This sheds

some light on the preference of theology for dichotomy

over trichotomy; the realized relation between God and man is more naturally expressed in dichotomous lan-

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THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

guage.** But dichotomous language is hardly adequate to describe the condition of sinful man, who is not in communion with God. Irenaeus was one who identified

the spirit of man with the presence of the Spiritof God in

him, and heassociated it particularly with the “likeness ”

(or “similitude”), which he distinguished from the “image ”of God; since the Fall, in his view, involved the loss of the likeness (but not the image), fallen man became a being withoutspirit at all, a being of animal or carnal nature.“* The fall is conceived as a fall into dichot-

omy. But is fallen man really a being without spiritr Is

it not precisely in fallen man, the man whose communion

with God is broken, that the human spirit comes to consciousness of itself in its distinctness from the Spirit of God? It would seem to be moreplausible to represent the

Fall as a fall into trichotomy, not in the sense that spirit

becomesdistinct from soul at the Fall, but that they no longer point in the same direction.** The structure of

man’s being, ie., the dependence of his creaturely existence (his soul) upon God, remains unchanged; but his

relation to God is changed, inasmuchas his created spirit

no longer responds in freedom to the Spirit of God. Yet spirit remains spirit, and the essential quality and dimen-

sion of spiritual activity continue to manifest themselves

in sinful man.

As the faculty of self-transcendence, as freedom torelate himself to that which is beyond himself, the presence of spirit in man manifests itself to a phenomenclogical view.

Inasmuch as spirit in sinful man has lost its creational

“orientation toward God” and has becomea “ capacity for indeterminate self-transcendence,’ *’ sinful man may be said to have lost the image of God. But inasmuch as spirit continues to be present in sinful man and, indeed,

to constitute the most distinctive feature about him, the

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN SPIRIP |

117

being of man retains its essentially image-character; and the activity of spirit, which is free, may be interpreted both philosophically, as the quest for universal truth and value,** the aspiration after that which is meaningful and

normative,and theologically, as the search for the God

man has lost through his sin/ Berdyaev expressed the plight of man in the phrase, “Man has lost his image,” but it would be more appropriate to say that he has lost

his original, of which he is the image; for the presence of

spirit in man is the index of the essentially image-charac-

ter of his being. _ In this way it seems possible for Christian theology to recognize the element of truth in the Platonic doctrine of

anamnesis and the description of the spirit’s activity as eros; for eros, as the child of poros (plenty) and penia (poverty ), represents the longing for a lost fullness. This

' significance can be accorded to the humanspirit without

fear of compromising the essential evangelical doctrine

of sola gratia; for it does not mean an inherent capacity for God which is unimpaired by sin; it is in the freedom

of his spirit that man changes his freedom for God to a freedom from God. But man cannot in the freedom ofhis spirit reverse this change. That is the essential limitation . upon the freedom of his spirit as created. Created spirit cannot choose the Creator as a possibility. The restoration of man’s relation to God involves the abnegation of all the possibilities of created spirit, the acknowledgment ofhis poverty of spirit, the sacrifice of a broken and a contrite spirit, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not annihilate our spirits, but bears witness withour

spirits.And the Holy Spirit does not destroythefreedom of ourspirits, but restores it by changing their false_free-

dom from God into that true freedom for God, which is

“ the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

THEOLOGY LIBRARY CLAREMONT, CALIF.

Notes Chapter I

1 A. BR. Vidler, Christian Belief, pp. 55£. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950.

2 One of the most widely read treatments of the Spirit in recent years, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (James Nisbet & Co., Ltd., London, 1928), was, significantly the work of an Old Testament scholar, H. Wheeler Robin-

son. * Cf. A. E, J. Rawlinson, The New Testament Doctrine of the Christ, p. 115. Longmans, London, 1926.

* Biichsel, Der Geist Gottes im Neuen Testament, p. 409.

Giitersloh, Bertelsmann, 1926. ' Cf. H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament,

p. 388. The Macmillan Company, London, 1909.

® Cf. C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.

Chapter 2

1 Cf. Hoskyns’ Commentary (Faber and Faber, London,

1947) on this passage and on John 1:5], and Eduard

Schweizer, Geist und Gemeinde im Neuen Testament und

heute (Theologische Existenz heute, N. F. 32), pp. 27f. Kaiser, Miinechen, 1952.

* Feine, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 261. Seventh edition, Hinrichs, Leipzig, 1936.

* The historical mystery surrounding the origin of the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed” does not concern us here. For an admirable discussion of it, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, pp. 296 ff. Longmans, London, 1950.

Translation from Kelly, op. cit., p. 298. Cf. Kelly, op. cié., pp. 842. Kelly, op. cit., p. 296. For the history of the Western interpolation, see Kelly, op. cit., pp. 358-367. * | have attempted to appraise it in an. article, “From the

‘ * * '

Father and the Son: The Filioque After Nine Hundred Years,” in Theology Today, XI, 4, pp. 449-459. 118

NOTES 9

10

119

Martin Kahler, “ Das schriftmiassige Bekenntnis zum Geiste Christi,” in Dogmatische Leitfragen, I, pp. 187-176. Dei-

chertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 1908.

Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, I, 1, pp. 500-511; Claude

Welch, “ The Holy Spirit and the Trinity,” in Theology To-

11 12 18 ié 168

day, VIII, 1 (1951), pp. 29-40; Carl Michalson, “ The Holy Spirit and the Church,” ibid., pp. 41-54; Claude Welch, In nis Name, Index, s.v. Filioque. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 952.

Barth, op. cit., p. 503. Welch, In This Name, p. 184. Op. cit., p. 285.

There is a full discussion of it in Welch’s book. Augustine, De Trinitate, 5, 12. Origen’s comment on John

4:24, “ Godis spirit,” is: “ Here it is said that pneuma is, as

is were, his ousia (Comm. in Jo., XIII, 21-23, ed., Brooke,

16 1T

18

19 20

I, pp. 267-270).

Theology Today, VIII, 1, p. 29.

The naive way is by a simple “both . . . and.” Cf. Calvin, Inst., III, 1, 2.

The Christian Understanding of God, p. 44. Harper &

Brothers, 1951.

Op. cit., p. 197.

All quotations are from Tillich, Systematic Theology, I, pp. 250 f. University of Chicago Press, 1951. Compare the very similar position taken by Boulgakof: “God is Spirit in his tri-personal being. . . . At the same timethespirituality in God is expressly attributed to the Holy Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit who manifests the spirituality of the Trinity. . . . Similarly the Holy Spirit realizes the spirituality which belongs to each of the hypostases. . . . In this

way the Holy Spirit is both a single and a triple hypostasis ”

Zi 22 23 Za 25

26

27

(Le Paraclet, pp. 145 ff. Aubier, Paris, 1946).

Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, 1, pp. 51-09.

Op. cit., p. 44 (Leitsatz). Op.cit., pp. 59-68. Op. cit., I, 2, p. 431.

Op.cit., I, 2, p. 269.

Op. cit., TIT, 2, pp. 428 ff,

Loc. cit., p. 458.

120

NOTES

Chapter 8 i

2

4

A. R. Vidler, Christian Belief, p. 78. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950. The Church: Report of a Theological Commission on Faith and Order, 1951, p. 58. §.C.M. Press, London, 1951. Faith and Order: The Report of the Third World Conference at Lund, Sweden, August 15-28, 1952, p. 11. 8.C.M. Press, 1952.

The Gospel and the Catholic Church. Longmans, London,

1986. Divinum illud, June 20, 1896.

Mystici corporis, June 29, 1943.

Cf. Congar, Divided Christendom, p. 57 (Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., London, 1989), and Mystici corporis (edition of Na-

tional Catholic Welfare Conference), pp. 21 f.

Satis cognitum, June 20, 1896, cited from The Great En-

cyclicals of Leo XUI, pp. 351 ff. Benziger Brothers, New

9

10 E11

12 43 14 45 14

17

18 19

20 #1

York, 1903. Cf. Divinum illud, op. cit., supra, p. 422.

Mystici corporis, p. 9.

Ibid, p. 15.

Leo XIIE, op. cit., p. 355.

Mystici corporis, p. 30. Congar, op. cit., p. 26. Mystici corporis, p. 9. Ibid., p. 22.

A, M. Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, p. 69. Longmans, London, 1936.

Op. cit., p. 77. The Apostolic Ministry. Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., London, 1946.

Op.cit., pp. 82 f.

Cf, Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, pp. 163 £. 5.C.M.

Press, London, 1948.

2 Op, cit., p. 183. 25

Op. cit., p. 61. Cf. the similar judgment of Hermann Diem:

~ The Church takes the gospel under its own management,

so that there can be no confrontation between it and the

Word of God, and its preaching becomes a mere conversa-

NOTES

131

tion with itself.” Theologie als kirchliche Wissenschaft, p. 19. zt 25

Kaiser, Miimchen, 1951. Cf. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik,IV, 1, p. 808.

Op. cit., pp. 851 f. Cf. pp. 361 £., where we have an even cruder statement of the papal conception of the “institution of Christianity”: “Christ proves his own divinity and the divine origin of his mission by miracles; he teaches the multi-

tudes heavenly doctrine by word of mouth; and he abso-

lutely commands that the assent of faith should be given to

his teaching, promising eternal rewards to those who believe

and eternal punishment to those who do not [the popecites

John 10:37; 15:24; 10:38]. . . . When about to ascend into

heaven he sends his apostles in virtue of the same power by which he had been sent from the Father; and he charges

them to spread abroad and propagate his teaching [Matt. 28:18-20]. . . . But since it is obviously most in harmony with God’s providence that no one should have confided to

him a great and important mission unless he were furnished with the means of properly carrying it out, for this reason

26

2T

Christ promised that he would send the Spirit of truth to his disciples to remain with them forever.”

Op. cit., p. 91. Cf. p. 69: “ Thus the Church on earth follows this law of incarnation.” Cf, Augsburg Confession, Art. V: “In order that we may obtain this faith [by which we are justified] there has been instituted the ministry of preaching the gospel and dispensing the sacraments. For it is through the Word and sacraments as means that the Holy Spirit is given, whe produces

28 29 ag

$i

faith, as and when it seems good to God, in those who hear the gospel.” Mystici corporis, p. 21.

Inst., III, 2, 6. This phrase, which was first used of the Eucharist, is more

commonly applied to the Church in the Anglican communion. Efforts to trace its origin have so far proved unsuccessful, (See correspondence in the Anglican journal, Theology, July, 1952.) Congar, op. cit., p. 69. Congar cites the law of incarnation

as the groundof the divine-human character of the Church. He does not expressly relate it to the principle of historical

SOUTHERN CALIFORNTA sCHOOL OF THEOLOGY LIBRARY

122

NOTES

continuity; but this is a commonplace in Roman theology. Notvertically from above, as we should perhaps expect, but from below. The Spirit arises out of the depths of the soul. This was the teaching of Miinzer and Denck. Chapter 4 1

Conf. Aug., Art. V, De Ministerio Ecclesiastico.

Ut hanc fidem consequamur, institutum est ministerium

docendi evangelii et porrigendi sacramenta. Nam per verbum, et sacramenta tamquam per instrumenta donatur

Spiritus Sanctus, qui fidem efficit, ubi et quando visum est

Deo,in iis qui audiunt evangelium.

Cat. Genev., pp. 301-307 (Bekenntnisschriften der re-

or4ge

fs

»

formierten Kirche, ed. Niesel, p. 34). Kaiser, Miinchen, 1938.

16

On. cit., p. 223.

A. 89.

Inst., I, 9, 3.

Inst., I, 7, 44. Inst., I, 7, 2.

Westminster Confession, I, 5.

Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas. Contra ep., Manich., 5, 6. Inst., I, 7, 8. Had Augustine meant what Calvin says, he

would surely have expressed himself differently: “I should

not have believed .. . unless I had been influenced .. .”;

i.c., he would have written: Credidissem . . . commovisset.

I owe this point to Loofs, Dogmengeschichte (4th ed.), p. ai

869. Niemeyer, Halle, 1906.

It is interesting to compare the role which Calvin, some-

what grudgingly, allows to the Church in this context with

that which he assigns to it in his extended treatment of the doctrine of the Church in Inst., IV, 1, 1. There the

Church appears as the mother “in whose bosom it is God’s

will that his sons should be gathered, not only to be nourished by her Jabor and ministry while they are infants and children, but to be governed by her maternal care until they grow up andat length attain to the goal of their faith.” Here the Church seemsrather to play the part of the father of the bride who hands her over to the bridegroom and thenre-

tires discreetly into the background.

NOTES

128

2 Inst., I, 7, 5.

18 Yn his comment on John 11:49, Calvin rejects the view that

the prophecy of Caiaphas is to be ascribed to “ mechanical ” inspiration: “He did not utter an unintelligible sound like a person in a trance or ecstasy (¢amquam arrepticus et fa-

naticus); he spoke according to his own understanding: but

the Evangelist means that his tongue was under a higher direction, because God willed that something higher than what was in his own mind should be attested by his mouth. Caiaphas was, so to speak, bilingual at that moment.” 14 Obsolescence of Oracles, 432. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Loeb Classical Library. 18 Phaedrus, 244A. Plato thought mantike (prophecy) was

derived from mania (madness). Reprinted by permission

of the publishers from Loeb Classical Library. 1@ Jon, 583 Df. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Loeb Classical Library. 17 Philo, Who Is the HeirP 259. Cf. Special Laws, IV, 49: “For no pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own;he is an interpreter prompted by another in all his utterances, when not knowing what he does he is filled with inspira-

tion, as the reason withdraws and surrenders the citadel of

the soul to a new visitor and tenant, the divine Spirit which plays upon the vocal organism and dictates words which clearly express its prophetic message.” While Plato extended such inspiration to the poets, Philo believed it to be

of frequent occurrence in his own experience as a writer of prose — many writers will recognize a familiar experience in the description he gives: “ For the offspring of the soul's own travail are for the most part poor abortions, things untimely born, but those which God waters with the snowsof heaven come to the birth perfect, complete and peerless. I feel no shame in recording my own experience, a thing 1 know from its having happened to me a thousand times. On some occasions, after having made up my mind to follow the usual course of writing on philosophical tenets, and knowing definitely the substance of what I wasto set down, I have found my understanding incapable of giving birth to

a single idea, and have given it up without accomplishing

anything, reviling my understanding forits self-conceit, and

124

NOTES

filled with amazement at the might of Him whois, and to

whom is due the ppening and closing of the soul wombs.

On other occasions J have approached my work empty and

suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and being sown invisibly, so that under the influence

of the divine possession I have been filled with corybantic frenzy and been unconscious of anything, place, persons pre-

sent, myself, words spoken, lines written. For I obtained

language, ideas, and enjoyment of light, keenest vision,

pellucid distinctness of objects, such as might be received

through the eyes as the result of clearest showing” (Migration of Abraham, 33 .). Reprinted by permission of the

1&

publishers from Loeb Classical Library.

Cf. Volz, Der Geist Gottes, p. 168. Mohr, Tiibingen, 1910.

The change was accompanied by an intellectualization of the content of revelation and the elevation of the “ intellec-

tual” (in the form of the scribe) as its interpreter. The

trend is already apparent in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, where the great alternative of the blessing and the curse, of good and evil, of life and death, is pre-

sented in terms of wisdom andfolly, and the path oflife is paved with knowledge and instruction and understanding and learning. It is more pronounced in the apocryphalliterature belonging to the same type. Ecclesiasticus surveys the various employments of mankind andassesses their relative

importance in the scheme of things: the physician is to be honored, because healing, in which heis skilled, comes from

the Most High; the farmer, whose mindis all on his fields

and his beasts, “and whose discourse is of the stock of bulls,” the smith sweating in front of his forge with the

noise of the hammer continually in his ears, the potter pedaling away at his wheel — all these “ maintain the fabric

of the world.” But their place is inferior. The highest place belongs to the scribe, who “by opportunity of leisure” has applied himself to the study of the Law and the Prophets and the wisdom of the ancients and has become an acknowledged authority in the interpretation of them; he will make

himself an immortal name by his understanding — for such

is the pint with which he shall be filled (Ecclus., chs. 38; 39).

NOTES 10 20 21

22

195

Philo, Life of Moses, II, 37, Cf, Calvin, Inst., I, 7, 2.

Cf. Theo Preiss, Das innere Zeugnis des heiligen Geistes,

p. 1]. Evangelische Verlag, Ziirich, 1947. Art. 4: Nous cognoissons ces livres estre Canoniques, et la reigle trescertaine de nostre foy (Pseau. 19, 8 et 9): non tant par le commun accord ef consentement de FEglise, que

par le tesmoignage et persuasion interieure du sainct Esprit, qui les nous fait discerner @avec les authres livres Ecclesiastiques, sur lesquels, encore qwils soyent utiles, on ne

2s 24

26

peut fonder aucun article de foy (Niesel, op. cit., p. 67). Cf. Westminster Confession,I, 3.

Cited in H. Cunliffe-Jones, The Authority of the Biblical

Revelation, p. 68. James Clarke, Ltd., London, 1945, Quenstedt, a classic exponent of Lutheran orthodoxy,tries to emphasize the difference between the inspiration of the Bible and such pagan conceptions — but it amounts to no more than the difference between a stenographer and a type-

writer (Schmid, Dogmatik der ev.-luth. Kirche, p. 21. Ber-

26 27 2s

29 £0

telsmann, Giitersloh, 1893}.

Cf. Theo Preiss, op. cié., p. 26.

Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Letter I. Bell, London,1918.

Milligan, The New Testament Documents, pp. 227. (quoted in H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, p. 179). Cf, H. Cunliffe-Jones, op. cit., p. 94. The romantic nature of the appeal of Scripture to Coleridge is evident from his description of what he found in it — “copious sources of truth, and power and purifying impulses” (loc. cit.). The appeal can also be ofa literary and aesthetic order; indeed, the number of people for whom the

BE

appeal of the Bible is bound up with thestately Elizabethan English of the Authorized Version is probably greater than we should imagine. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, p. 87. Princeton Untversity Press, 1936.

Chapter 5 i Cf. Eisler, Wérterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, I, p. 485 (E. S. Mittler, Berlin, 1927-1930), and Wili, “ Die Ge-

126

NOTES

=

hu/,hlUelUh

schichte des Geistes in der Antike,” Eranos Jahrbuch, 1945,

p. 58. Rhein-Verlag, Ziirich, 1946. Conf., I, 1. De civ. dei, VIII,4. Cont. gent., III, 95, ete.

For a good example in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, see Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, IL, pp. 277 ff. Hochschulverlag Hueber, Miinchen, 1949.

* WA, 7, p. 550.

' Symbolische Biicher der ev.-luth. Kirche, ed., J. T. Miiller, 8 9 10 il 12 18 14 1s

26

17¥

18

19

20

21

23 33

p: 358. Bertelsmann, Giitersloh, 1898.

WA,7, p. 551.

Symbolische Biicher der ev-luth. Kirche, p. 598.

Inst., I, 15, 6.

Cf. Comm. on John 14:1.

Inst., II, 4, 1. Cf, West. Conf., X, 2 and IX, 3.

West. Conf., X, 2.

VI, p. 599, quoted by H. Barth in “Die Geistfrage im deutschen Idealismus,” in Zur Lehre vom Heiligen Geist,

p. 17. Kaiser, Miinchen, 1930. Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, p. 48.

Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Miinchen, 1947. Cf. George F. Thomas, Spirit and Its Freedom. University

of North Carolina Press, 1939.

Nature and Destiny of Man, I, pp. 3f. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943.

H. H. Farmer, Towards Belief in God, pp. 741. $.C.M.

Press, London, 1942.

Niebuhr,op. cit., p. 14. Scheler traces a connection between man’s ability to conceive the empty forms of space and time and his experience of emptiness in his intercourse with the world of space and time. “Empty is the name we give originally to the unfulfillment of our impulsive expectations — thefirst void, so to speak, is the void of our own hearts.” Op. cit., p. 46.

Brunner, Man in Revolt, p. 238. The Westminster Press,

1947. Op. cit., p. 49. Niebuhr, op.cit., I, p. 162.

NOTES 24

127

Eichredt, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2, p. 19, n. 10.

Hinrichs, Leipzig, 1935.

26 27

Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 203. Mohr, Tubingen, 1948. Op.cit., p. 20,

Cf. Barth, KD, III, 1, pp. 267 ff. For Schmaus, the human

spirit is the focal point of the image of God: “It is in his

spirit that man is the image of God, that he bears the linea-

ments of God, that he is akin to God” { Katholische Dog35 29

80 a1 #2 af fa B45 a6 BT

matik, 2, p. 332).

Bultmann,op. cit., pp. 205 £

Cf. Scheler, op. cit., p. 87.

KD,I, 1, p. 40.

KD,III, 1, pp. 1.

KD, UI, 2, pp. 414-440,

KD,I, 2, p. 380.

KD,I, 1, p. 179. KD,I, 1, pp. 130 ff. KD,TI, 2, p. 48.

Butit is not the only one; and the similar use of other terms,

such as truth (John 1:17), faith (Gal. 3:25), love (Rom.

he 89 40

§:39), life (I John 1:2), serves as a warning against pressing any one term too far.

KD,II, 1, p. 398. Nicene Creed. For Augustine, grace is the grace of God the Father Almighty, rather than the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Cf.

Harnack, DG, II, p. 217 (Mohr, Tibingen, 1910): “ Dass

die Gnade gratia per Christum sei, hat Augustin keineswegs

41 42

so sicher festgehalten, wie dass sie aus dem verborgenen Wirken Gottes stamme.” Cf. Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, 2, pp. 277 £.

The necessity for a revision of the conception of grace in Protestant theology was first urged by John Oman in Grace and Personality (Cambridge University Press, London,

1917). In this book, which was first published in 1917, the

distinction between the I-thou and the [-it relationship, which was to receive its classical exposition at the hands of Martin Buber six years later, was already drawn and applied to theological thinking.

128

NOTES

‘8 Niebuhr points out the importance of making a distinction between the essential nature of man and the virtue of conformity to it: “Man may lose this virtue and destroy the proper function of his nature, but he can do so only by availing himself of one of the elements in that nature,

namely this freedom” (Nature and Destiny of Man, I, p. 286). For an example of the difficulties presented by this distinction in theological thinking in which the existence

of created spirit, and its freedom, is not recognized, see Barth, Zur Lehre vom Heiligen Geist, p. 45, n. 19. This

would be the decisive reason for rejecting Barth’s identification of the image of God in man with therelation between

man and woman (KD, IIE, 1, pp. 204-231); for the latter is

inherentin his physiological structure and is, as such, a rela-

tion of necessity, to say nothing of the fact that it is common to man and other members of the animal creation. Yet,

inasmuch as the relation between man and woman reaches the distinctively human level only when a free or spiritual

relation is superimposed on the structural relation, it may be

taken as an analogy or image of the image of God in man.

44 In his discussion of dichotomy and trichotemy, Delitzsch

says that the “ dichotomic view according to which Scripture knows nothing of a created spirit . . . is an actual proof of

the strong impression made by the assumption that governs the usus loquendi of Scripture, that the created spirit of man is a spirit that proceeds from God” (Biblical Psychology, p. 107. Clark, Edinburgh, 1869),

45 Adv, Haer., V. 6, 1.

“6 Cf. Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 114: “ The essential difference be-

tween a human nature-psyche and the humanthinking spirit is an invention contrary to Scripture and to experience. The dualism of psyche and pneuma, under which man, consid-

ered ethically, is groaning, is a consequence of sin, which

has disunited in itself his life-principle which he had received immediately from God.”

4 The phrases are taken from Niebuhr, op.cit., pp. 163 f. 48 Thomas, op. cit., p. 49. 4° Brunner, op. cié., p. 238.

'

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Hendry, George atuart, Lyva-

The Holy Spirit in Christian theology.

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The Holy Spirit in Christian theology. Westminster Press [¢1956] =

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128 p, 21cm, Includes biblicgraphical references,

1. Holy Spirit.

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